Chapter 4

The heater on the train worked furiously, and Lizzie took off her coat and scarf and eventually stood up and wrestled with the window to lower it a bit and let some of the cold outside air into the hot compartment. She was glad that she didn’t have to share the space with anyone because it was her impression that English people objected to fresh air on trains.

She settled comfortably into her seat and studied the London landscape trundling by below her. The train was on a high embankment and she could see easily onto the rooftops and into the back gardens of row upon row of brick houses. It reminded her of the opening sequence of the animated version of “Peter Pan,” or of the city as described by Dickens, though now a lot cleaner. She thought about Peter Jeffries and wondered that he would share so much information with a stranger, being English and all. But Lizzie knew from past experience that she had an open face that invited confidences, and she had been just as candid with him as he had been with her, maybe more so.

As the city gave way to the suburbs, Lizzie dozed briefly, and when she woke up the countryside stretched out into the foggy distance. She had been to England several times before but never in winter, and the landscape that she knew to be verdant green in summer was bleakly grey through a light mist. She liked the movement of the train and was almost hypnotized by the repetitive pattern of field and hedge, field and hedge, field and hedge. Occasionally a village whizzed by, but so fast that she could not read the town name on the sign. She took Martin’s gift from her bag and read again about the house that was her destination. None of the accompanying photographs showed it in winter. Always the grass was green, the garden in full bloom, the sea visible under a clear blue sky beyond the carefully cultivated landscape.

When she finally saw Hengemont for the first time, it was from the back seat of a Bentley identical to the one driven by young Pete Jeffries in London. She was met at the station by his father, just plain Jeffries, and she was more circumspect about engaging him in conversation than she had been with his son. They drove quickly through the village, past a charming pub and inn called the White Horse. A signboard swinging above the door showed the outline of an ungainly white horse. A moment later, as the buildings of the village gave way to farm and hedge and hillside, she saw the animal after which the pub was named, its Neolithic chalk outline scratched out from beneath the grass on a nearby slope. There were occasional farmhouses and a square-towered Norman church stretched out along the road before they entered the Hatton property.

Hengemont was huge and solid and ancient. The central tower was almost a thousand years old and Lizzie watched eagerly for it, anticipating some imprint of all those years on the big stone face of the building. She saw it first across a vast expanse of lawn, faded from the winter cold and dotted with leafless oak and chestnut trees. As they drove up a gentle slope to the great front entrance, Lizzie instantly recognized the three gigantic stones which framed it.

Jeffries handed her over to his wife, who handed her bags over to another man, whose name was not shared with Lizzie, and the three stepped into the house. The main entrance brought her directly into the cavernous great hall of the original castle. High overhead the arched ceiling was held up by enormous carved beams. On either side was a massive stone fireplace and flanking each were tapestries two stories high.

“We don’t ordinarily use this door,” Mrs. Jeffries explained, “but Sir George thought that you, being a historian, would like it.”

“Indeed I do,” Lizzie said. “It’s fabulous.”

High double doors opened off the room on either side. To her right Lizzie saw a grand formal dining room, and to her left a room that would, in America, probably be called the living room, though this one, with four or five different groupings of couches, chairs, and tables, reminded her more of the lobby of a fancy hotel. They continued straight ahead, finally passing through a door in a massive, though delicately carved, wooden panel. Above Lizzie recognized the gallery from which musicians would have entertained the guests in ancient days.

She was sorry that she was being hurried through this oldest part of the house, and wished that she could have stumbled on the place by herself with time to linger at each change of perspective. In her mind the very atmosphere was infused with the breath of past inhabitants, with the vibrations of the strings and horns that had once played in the space above her. She threw all hesitation to the wind and instantly adored the place.

They went through another door and dramatically changed centuries. Gone were the stone walls, carved beams, and tapestries of the medieval castle; now they were in a light and airy Georgian hall. The walls were painted in creamy pastels and a decorative plaster frieze border ran around the top of the wall and framed the doorways. Lizzie was glad that Martin had given her the book. She immediately recognized this part of the house as the work of the architect Robert Adam.

Two elaborate carved staircases dominated the room, curving up from the floor of the hall to meet on a balconied mezzanine above her. Opposite the staircase were tall glass doors, topped by an elaborate fan-shaped window with beveled glass. Lizzie could see from here out onto the stone terrace and beyond it to the garden, sloping down toward the sea. From here the outline of the house became clear. Framing the terrace on one side was the old Tudor wing, and opposite was the wing built by Inigo Jones. The fourth side of the square was open, except for some low stone ruins that must once have defined that side of the castle yard that faced the Bristol Channel.

Again there were double doors to her right and left. The ones on her right were closed, but on the left she caught a quick glimpse of a library before Mrs. Jeffries led her up the stairs. The two arcs of the staircase came up to a landing where a large painting covered almost the whole of the wall. It was of two young men, in their late teens or early twenties, and an adolescent girl. They sat in a lush landscape.

“What a lovely painting,” Lizzie said, stepping slightly closer to read the brass title on the frame. The Children of Sir John Hatton, 1773, by Thomas Gainsborough, it said.

“He’s the ‘Blue Boy’ painter,” Mrs. Jeffries explained.

Lizzie nodded. “Is one of these boys Lieutenant Francis Hatton, who made the Cook voyage?”

“If I remember correctly, he’s the one on the right,” the housekeeper answered, “but we have a catalogue and I can look it up for you later.”

“Thanks,” Lizzie said, moving slowly along the few remaining stairs up to the next floor and gazing at the other pictures hanging above her. It pleased her that Francis Hatton looked intelligent and exuberant in the portrait.

Mrs. Jeffries showed her to her room on the second floor of the Inigo Jones wing of the house. It was at the end of a long wide hall and as they entered it Lizzie was struck by the beauty of the house’s setting, which was even more dramatic from this height. Tall windows were on two sides of the room and she was drawn immediately to the windows across from the door, which faced the older Tudor wing of the house. She then turned to the windows on her right. The view was across the formal garden, barren in the winter, but giving every indication of how glorious it must be in summer. Beyond it was the ruined wall of the original castle fortifications, and beyond that fields and moors stretched out along the long slope down to the sea.

What would it be like to live here? Her imagination placed her at various locations around the house, and in various centuries of its history. She forgot that Mrs. Jeffries was still in the room until she heard her speak.

“Sir George wanted to give you some time to get settled, but will be available to meet you whenever you’re ready.”

Lizzie thanked her, got a tour of the room, closets, and adjoining bathroom, and told the housekeeper that she expected she would be back downstairs within a half hour.

When Mrs. Jeffries was gone, Lizzie took a few minutes to survey the room that would be her home for the next few weeks. It was extremely pleasant. The furniture was solid and heavy but the room was made to seem quite light by the expanse of windows, and by the fabric that covered the bed and the two wooden-armed chairs, an ivory silk embroidered all over with vines and small flowers. The bed had gauzy curtains, pulled back near the head, and matching fabric was at the windows. She could not help being drawn back to the view, and with each visit to the windows she took in more of the details.

The Tudor wing of the house was directly opposite across the terrace and formal garden. The surface facing Lizzie was not flat, but came forward and stepped back as projecting gabled sections of the wall alternated with areas set back into darker recesses. The windows there were mostly small, unlike the windows through which she looked. All in all, Lizzie thought, she had been placed in the more comfortable part of the house, and she appreciated the fact that her room was on the end. Beyond the Tudor wing of the house she could just see the village of Hengeport as it meandered its way down the hill to its harbor.

Mrs. Jeffries had offered to unpack Lizzie’s bags for her, but she had absolutely refused, embarrassed that the housekeeper might judge the disarray of her packing and find her wardrobe inappropriate. There was a formality and stiffness to Mrs. Jeffries, almost as if she was used to a higher standard of guest. Lizzie didn’t know quite what to think of her.

She opened her suitcase and sighed. When she packed for the trip she hadn’t a clue what George Hatton was expecting of her. For starters, she wasn’t even sure if she was going to be treated as a house guest or an employee, and Martin had been no help. When she asked him what she should pack to wear in a stately home he had suggested gowns and tiaras.

Lizzie held certain stereotypes about English people of this class getting dressed up for dinner, and it was her impression that their houses never had adequate heat or plumbing. She had decided that she would need warm clothing and that her usual wardrobe of corduroy slacks and comfortable sweaters would be fine for working during the day. Just in case things got fancy for dinner, she had packed her two nice dresses, one of which she hadn’t worn in months.

Now she pulled it from her suitcase and held it in front of her as she examined herself in the long mirror on the back of the closet door. Lizzie was happy and well adjusted and had always liked the way she looked, but she had to admit that at this moment she was hopelessly unfashionable. Curvy and soft in a world that prized gaunt fitness, she also had curly hair that absolutely refused to be controlled. She had never felt comfortable wearing it short, and with each added inch of length it threatened to curl and frizz more and so she had, for years, worn it just to the length of her shoulders. Some years she had been lucky and fashionability had come her way, at other times she had simply had to wait it out, but her curly brown hair remained the same. As she ran a comb through it, she took stock, as she regularly did, of the grey that was creeping in around the edges. She would be forty years old on her next birthday.

The dress looked fine. She was, after all, here to work, not to live. George Hatton would just have to accept her as she was. She finished combing her hair, brushed her teeth, put on the dress, and retraced her steps to the staircase, lingering for a minute to look again at the portrait of Francis Hatton. His brother was darker and appeared more brooding, as if he had more responsibilities pressing on him. Their sister was a pink-cheeked girl, an apparently happy child There was another picture hanging beside the Gainsborough that seemed to show the same girl as a young woman. Lizzie didn’t know if it was just a strong family resemblance, but she stood for a moment looking from the girl to the woman.

“Are you comfortable in your room, Dr. Manning?” Mrs. Jeffries asked from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes, very comfortable, thank you,” Lizzie answered. She found herself unable to resist asking, “Is this the same girl?” as she gestured between the two pictures. Mrs. Jeffries said that it was.

In her separate portrait, Francis Hatton’s sister seemed more fragile, her large grey eyes intelligent but sad. Lizzie wondered what life had dealt her in the intervening years. She continued down to the bottom of the stairs.

Mrs. Jeffries did not look her directly in the eyes, but Lizzie had a feeling she was being studied by the housekeeper when she wasn’t looking. She searched in the woman’s face for a resemblance to the amiable young man who had picked her up at the airport and could see from the lines on Mrs. Jeffries face that she must often smile and laugh. Her face was stern enough now though, as she turned and led Lizzie toward the double doors that led to the library. “Sir George is anxious to meet you,” she said.

Lizzie found herself somewhat nervous at the prospect of meeting George Hatton. She had a strong mental image of British aristocrats, derived mostly from Jane Austen novels, P.G. Wodehouse short stories, Jackie’s rants, and various episodes of Monty Python, but no real experience with anyone like Sir George. She was already feeling surprisingly comfortable in the house and didn’t want to lose that feeling by meeting its owner and finding him condescending, exasperating, or stupid. It was consequently a pleasant surprise to find him perfectly civil and seemingly interested in her work. He was not exactly warm, but neither was he twitty or dithering, he didn’t speak with a lisp or a stutter, his handshake was firm, and he looked her right in the eye when he welcomed her to his house.

She still hadn’t decided how she would address him. She didn’t want to be impolite, but she was determined not to be deferential. He called her “Dr. Manning” and she, almost automatically, called him “Mr. Hatton.” He raised an eyebrow slightly at that, but was too polite to comment. She invited him to call her “Lizzie,” and he returned that she might call him “George, if that suited her.” She said that it did and was relieved to have this first bit of discomfort behind her.

George asked Mrs. Jeffries to bring them a pot of coffee, and offered Lizzie one of two tall wing chairs situated in front of a large fireplace. As they sat down she had an opportunity to study him. If there was some indefinable yet recognizable aristocratic type, George Hatton was it. In a different time and under other circumstances, Lizzie could see how people might take it for an innate nobility. He was very tall and had an elegance about him that was hard to describe but very noticeable. His hair was perfectly white, his eyes a clear grey-blue. Though he was probably at least seventy years old, he was still a very handsome man. He was also extraordinarily polite, making every effort to make Lizzie comfortable, even telling her how much he had enjoyed her book.

They talked for several minutes about Francis Hatton and his voyage with Captain Cook. George was obviously quite proud of the connection, and Lizzie told him how excited she was about working with the objects and especially the journal.

“Those pages you sent me could not have been better chosen for convincing me to take on this project,” she said.

He admitted that after reading her book he had selected those passages with her in mind. Lizzie was flattered and, for a moment, didn’t know how to respond.

Mrs. Jeffries returned with coffee, saving Lizzie the necessity of having to make an immediate reply, and giving her an opportunity to watch the interaction between the master and the servant as the latter set a tray of coffee things on the table next to Lizzie’s chair. George and his housekeeper seemed entirely comfortable with but respectful of each other. Lizzie tried to catch the eye of Mrs. Jeffries, but the other woman was careful not to look at her, and Lizzie made no attempt to engage her in conversation other than to thank her for the service, which George echoed.

Lizzie found herself unexpectedly liking George Hatton. Mostly it was because he was being extraordinarily cordial to her, but he was also surprising her in several ways large and small. Whatever her expectations might have been, they were not for a smart, handsome, and seemingly generous-spirited man. Had she been expecting him to be imperious or dismissive with the housekeeper on whom he depended for his comfort, she thought? A woman whom he had probably known for many years?

Now that she was actually here at Hengemont, such notions seemed ludicrous. Lizzie reminded herself sternly that it was the twenty-first century. If not for the consternation it would certainly cause George Hatton and Mrs. Jeffries, she thought she might occasionally give herself a smart slap on the cheek as a reminder.

Other thoughts still poked at her though: Pete Jeffries’ comments about distinctions between classes, and the fact that Mrs. Jeffries, without exception, referred to her boss as “Sir George,” and he, in turn, never called her anything but “Mrs. Jeffries,” despite the fact that they probably had known each other for many years. And then the whole notion of servants was so antithetical to Lizzie anyway.

When she looked up, George seemed to be studying her. At least he had that in common with Mrs. Jeffries.

She picked up her cup, settled back in her chair, and asked him why Francis Hatton’s journal had never been published. It was a question that had been bothering her ever since she first received George’s letter. “Your ancestor was a good writer and more insightful than most of his shipmates,” she said.

“Francis Hatton specifically instructed his heirs not to surrender it to the Admiralty or allow it to be published,” George explained.

Lizzie thought of her conversation with Jackie. “Why didn’t he want it made public?” she asked. “Are there things in it that would have embarrassed him?”

George shook his head. “Not to my mind, but it’s not complete and I think he might have just hoped to finish it at some point.”

“But why would he keep his heirs from publishing it? Certainly by the time it got into their hands his opportunities for finishing it were kaput.”

Her host smiled at her and Lizzie wondered if she was being too informal. She was alternating between feeling very comfortable and suddenly being struck by a realization of where she was. With each jolt of awareness she felt as if her head had just hit the desk during a lecture and waked her.

She made an effort to smile back. “So why are you willing to publish it now?”

“Well,” he started slowly, “two centuries have passed and there is still interest in the voyage and in this account of it. Whatever he wanted done before it was published seems now to be beyond doing.”

“What do you mean, ‘whatever he wanted done’? Did he put conditions on the publication?”

With a clunk, George Hatton put his coffee cup on the table which sat between their two chairs. “I’m not sure what he wanted, I suppose. I haven’t actually read any conditions, I just heard from my father that Francis was unwilling to have the journal published.” He poured more coffee in his cup and made a gesture with the pot to offer Lizzie a warm-up, which she accepted.

“There has always been a pretty steady stream of attention paid to Cook voyage material,” Lizzie said, “but have you noticed some particular interest in Francis Hatton’s account now?”

George hesitated before answering, purposefully stirring his cup and taking a sip. “My son is interested in having it come out now,” he explained. “The British Museum is planning an exhibition on Captain Cook’s voyages in about a year and a half, and he’d like us to participate in it.”

Lizzie had heard the briefest mention of this from Tom Clark in their phone conversation a few weeks earlier. She too would be very happy to participate in such a project for the British Museum. If Francis Hatton’s collection of souvenir objects was as interesting as his journal, she might be able to position herself as a guest curator for some part of the exhibition, and could certainly publish something in conjunction with it. As she mulled this, George began a rambling discourse on what he knew about Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific Ocean.

Despite his keen interest in the subject, Lizzie quickly found that she knew a lot more than he did about Cook’s activities, and while she would have concentrated on what he was saying if he had stuck to specific information about his ancestor, she found her attention wandering around the library.

The room pleased her enormously; it was exactly what a library should be and she could not have improved on it if she had designed it herself. It was about twice as long as it was wide, and bookshelves were on every wall from the floor to a height of about ten feet. Above them there was still enough room under the tall ceiling for a row of portraits. The line of the shelves was broken only by the fireplace, four tall gothic windows, and three sets of double doors: the pair through which she had entered, another made of glass panes, which opened onto the stone terrace, and a third which she suddenly heard George telling her hid Francis Hatton’s museum “cabinet.”

This information brought her full attention back to what he was saying. Lizzie had seen many “cabinets of curiosities,” which were popular venues for the display of exotic artifacts in the eighteenth century. Most of the collections had long since left their original locations and been moved into museums or dispersed; it was unusual to find one still intact, especially in a private home. Until this moment Lizzie hadn’t thought much about how the Hatton family would have preserved Francis Hatton’s collection, but now it hit her for the first time that she might be able to see it as he had arranged it with his own hands.

The realization drew Lizzie from her chair like a magnet. Without looking away from those closed doors she rose from her chair and started toward them. George quickly put his cup down and followed her across the room. He seemed to sense that if he didn’t open them first she would spring upon the doors and fling them apart, and consequently he stepped in front of her and opened them carefully, sliding the door panels neatly behind the bookcases on either side.

Francis Hatton’s collection was a classic example of the late eighteenth century, displayed in a sort of giant closet with glass-fronted shelves rising from waist level up to the ceiling with rows of drawers set beneath them. Lizzie gasped with astonishment and pleasure as her eyes adjusted to the dim light and she began to discover what was lined up on the shelves.

“This was originally designed by the architect as a passage into the older wing of the house, but Francis Hatton took it over and turned it to a rather good purpose, I think.”

“My goodness,” Lizzie said, putting her cup of coffee on the large table that dominated that end of the room. She walked into the cabinet and tried to take it all in. Above her rose weapons, paddles, model ships, musical instruments, shoes, hats, masks, spoons, pipes, baskets, ceramic bowls, carvings, shells, stones, mounted birds, snake skins, shark’s jaws, tusks and bones from numerous animals, fans, feathers—in fact anything and everything, representing every continent known in Francis Hatton’s time. She opened a few of the drawers to find more of the same. Every space was crammed with artifacts, most having a label of some sort attached with a fine spidery scrawl describing what it was, where it had originated, and how it had been acquired.

Interspersed among the Polynesian clubs and the clove boats from Indonesia were a number of Northwest Coast Indian objects, including a whalebone club from Nootka Sound and a remarkable carved and painted wooden mask. George Hatton pointed out his favorite piece, a helmet with the face and claws of a bear mounted on it. On every shelf was a wonder. Lizzie asked him if the curator from the British Museum had seen the collection and George replied that he had not.

“Though I think my son Richard sent him photographs of some of the objects,” he said. He turned and smiled politely at Lizzie. “We met with Thomas Clark in London a few months ago,” he continued. “That’s when he showed me your book and suggested that you might be able to help us figure out what to do with the collection.”

Lizzie was overwhelmed by both the size and the scope of the collection and struggled to take it all in. Several of the objects were artistic masterpieces, and others were possibly the earliest known examples of their type. She could not believe that she was the first person to see it who could actually appreciate the value of the artifacts, both culturally and monetarily. It had been sitting on these shelves, essentially hidden and unknown, for over two hundred years.

“I had no idea the collection was so extensive,” she said, somewhat hesitantly. “I can help you identify the North American material here, and the Polynesian, but the range of the material goes way beyond my expertise.”

“Well at this point I am most interested in identifying those things that Francis Hatton collected himself on the voyage with Captain Cook,” George said. He opened one of the cabinets and pulled out a wooden Australian boomerang. “Here’s a piece that will interest you. It was collected on Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific and given to Francis Hatton by Sir Joseph Banks, who helped arrange for his commission in the Royal Navy.”

Lizzie was impressed. She took it from George and held it reverently. This was one of the first things from Australia ever seen by Europeans. She read the label pasted onto it: “Given to me by Sir Joseph Banks, July 21st, 1775. Collected by him on Captain Cook’s First Voyage.” Lizzie laid it down carefully and made a mental note to catalogue it with the first group of objects. As she set it on the shelf she noticed a yellow and brown plastic boomerang on the shelf behind it. She pulled it out. Written in black marker on it was a note: “To Mummy and Dad; Another treasure for the collection! John Hatton, Melbourne, Australia, September 1989.”

“A joke from my youngest son,” George explained. “He went out to Australia with the navy. Married an Australian girl and still lives there.”

Lizzie put it back on the shelf. It was with some difficulty that she restrained her enthusiasm, not just at seeing such an important collection, but in knowing that she could be the one to bring it to the attention of the public, and of a museum and academic community that would find it remarkable.

It was incredible luck, she thought, that George Hatton had stumbled on her book at precisely the right moment. Otherwise she could not believe that such an opportunity would have come to her rather than to any number of more senior British curators and scholars. She crossed her arms and turned to look again at George.

“Again, I have to ask you why none of this was ever made public?”

“Never saw any reason to,” he answered simply.

She thought it might be pressing her luck to delve deeper into this subject within her first hour of acquaintance with George, and turned back to study the collection.

“There’s also correspondence in several of the drawers,” George continued. A framed painting leaned against one tier of drawers, the back of the canvas facing them so that the picture wasn’t visible. A manila envelope was taped to the bare brown canvas. George lifted it up by the top of the frame and leaned it against the library table so that he could show Lizzie the documents in the drawers behind it.

“There are letters about the collection in here, I think,” he said, pulling one of the drawers open. It was filled almost to the top with scraps of paper. He looked at her a little sheepishly. “I had forgotten the level of disorganization in these drawers. People have just been chucking odd bits and pieces into them for about two hundred years.”

“I’m pretty fast at getting through material like that,” she reassured him. “It shouldn’t take me too long to at least get it organized into things that are and aren’t of interest for this project.”

She asked him if all of the artifacts had been collected by Francis Hatton. “Except for that second boomerang,” she added with a smile. She wasn’t quite sure yet how much of a sense of humor he had.

He smiled back. “Don’t worry. To my knowledge Johnnie’s joke there is one of only a handful of things not collected by Francis Hatton or someone in his circle of friends and correspondents.” He gestured at the crowded shelves. “Obviously he was a bit obsessive about his little hobby. I think he bothered everyone he ever met to collect things for him, but his notations seem to make clear which things were acquired by other travelers.”

“The hallmark of a great collector,” Lizzie responded

“I’m glad you think so,” he said. “His correspondence is in some of the drawers, and then there is also the journal.” He moved to a chair at the long library table and motioned to Lizzie to make herself comfortable in the adjacent one. As they sat down he asked if she was interested in taking on the project.

“Yes, very interested,” she answered. “Especially if we are concentrating just on his voyage material.” She folded her hands and rested them on the table as she looked again at the cabinet, trying to make a quick count of the number of Pacific pieces. Could she do the preliminary work in the weeks that she had available before classes started again?

She asked to see the journal, which had been her first glimpse into Francis Hatton’s world, and which she was anxious to read.

“I thought you’d like to see it right away,” George answered. There was a carved Chinese box on the table and he put his hand on it. “This is the case in which it has always been kept,” he said, opening the box and pulling a leather-bound volume from it.

He handed the book to Lizzie, who accepted it excitedly. She couldn’t resist opening the front cover and turning over the marbled end paper to reveal the title page. “A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean and ’Round the World” it started. It was written in the fine legible hand that she was already coming to recognize as Francis Hatton’s. She felt a thrill of anticipation.

“I look forward to spending time with this,” she said, closing the book and laying her hand with a light possessive touch on the cover. She wanted to be alone when she read it. The watchful eye of his descendent could only interfere in her relationship with Francis Hatton.

She turned her attention to the painting George had leaned against the leg of the table. It was a portrait of a red-haired woman with full, lush lips and a faraway look in her eye, caught in the process of waking from sleep. One arm was stretched out toward a vanishing dream, a knight in armor whose hand was stretched out in return, but it seemed a hopeless gesture.

Lizzie smiled and leaned toward it. “Rossetti,” she said. “I love his work.”

George looked at it somewhat disdainfully. “I purchased it about fifteen years ago and forgot that I stored it in the cabinet.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I’ll find another place for it,” he said, stepping toward it.

“May I look at it first?” Lizzie asked, rising to stand beside him.

“If you like,” George answered, “I’ll have Jeffries hang it in your room while you’re here.”

“Thank you,” she said with enthusiasm. “I am a fan of the Pre-Raphaelites.”

“Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid,” her host answered. “You’re welcome to enjoy it as long as you’re here.”

“Why did you buy it?” Lizzie asked with genuine curiosity.

George Hatton snorted a laugh. “The model is my great-great-aunt!” He held the painting up before him. “There was a bit of a scandal attached to it and I bought it because I didn’t want all that dredged up again by a public sale of the thing at auction.”

“She’s beautiful,” Lizzie said.

“Yes, but she was wild,” George said in response. “She lived with Rossetti after his wife died.”

Lizzie smiled. “Ah,” she said softly.

George picked up a pipe and sucked at a match through it. “What attracts you to the Pre-Raphaelites, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“They have a highly romanticized view of history that amuses me,” she said. Though she knew the depictions were fundamentally false, she still found them extremely compelling, and she knew that Jackie would certainly have added that to the list of things that worried her about Lizzie, had she known it.

She rested the painting carefully against the table again and found that the discussion had come to one of those strange lulls that can only be filled by turning to entirely meaningless topics. Lizzie was beginning to wish that George would soon be going and leaving her to the journal, but he made no sign of departing, and for a time they stood in uncomfortable silence.

“Where would you like to start?” he asked finally.

“With the journal,” she said, sitting again and looking more closely at the carved box. She was disappointed when George sat down again too.

“Did Francis bring this box home from the voyage?” she asked, unwilling to start any actual work while he was still in the room.

“No, he shipped it from Canton on an East Indiaman to avoid having to hand it over, and it arrived back here in this box with a piece of silk and a rather cryptic letter to his sister.” He leaned back, fingering his pipe. “It’s rather puzzling that he didn’t want it published, really. I’ve read it all and there is nothing very damning in it. He’s a bit arrogant maybe, but God knows that was hardly a crime in the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century.”

“Can I read the letter?”

“Of course,” he said. “I think it’s still tucked into the journal.”

Lizzie carefully opened the book again and leafed through it until she saw the loose paper that was the letter.

“My Dearest Eliza,” it began, “for reasons of my own, I’m sending my journal on to you from Canton. The Captain of the East India Company’s ship Cathay has agreed to bring you this silk and the box. Look for my heart in this box, as our ancestress looked for the heart of her Crusader when he was far from home.”

There followed some tender words of consolation about the recent death of their brother, and also gratitude for what she must be doing to comfort their father at such a hard time. He promised that his return was not far off and signed the letter, “Your affectionate brother, Francis.”

Lizzie leafed through the journal, reading the entries at the top of each page: “Ship Resolution Rounding Good Hope,” said several, “On the Coast of New Zealand,” said others. She saw titles for Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands, and finally “Ship Resolution on the Northwest Coast.” The last entry was dated April 14, 1778, and the ship was at Nootka Sound.

“Why did he stop keeping the journal?” she wondered aloud, flipping through at least sixty more sheets of clean white paper left in the book before any more were used.

George Hatton shrugged that he had no better idea than she.

She took a magnifying lens from her purse and looked along the binding edge of the paper at the last sheet that contained an entry. A number of pages had been cleanly cut out, as if with a razor.

“George?” she said, gesturing to it and leaning the book toward him.

He bent nearer to look.

Lizzie pointed to the book. “Who cut the pages out?” she asked.

He was puzzled. “Cut out?” he said, pulling a pair of glasses from his pocket and staring intently at where she was pointing. “I never noticed that,” he murmured, standing to get closer to the journal. “My grandfather first showed me this journal when I was a child and he lamented the fact that the voyage was interrupted. He never noticed any pages missing and he had been looking at it since he was a boy in the nineteenth century.” He sat down again, clearly perplexed.

Lizzie went back to the letter. “What does this mean?” she asked, reading aloud from the letter, “Look for my heart in this box, as our ancestress looked for the heart of her Crusader.”

He dismissed it as family folklore, though Lizzie felt that there was something more to it which he was unwilling to share with her. She didn’t press the subject however; it didn’t seem like anything she needed to know to begin the job at hand anyway.

“Well, I might as well get started with the work,” she said.

George gave her permission to set up a temporary office on the big table in the library, and to use the phone for Internet access. Lizzie went back to her room to get the carry-on case that held her computer equipment and then returned to the library and set up a working space with her laptop computer, printer, and portable scanner. She also had a digital camera that would allow her to photograph the objects in the collection and put them, along with whatever documentation existed about them, directly into her computer. This process would save her a lot of time in transcribing documents and describing artifacts.

The actual work seemed to interest George less than talking about it, and he finally began to make motions that he would leave Lizzie alone in the library. “Supper is at seven,” he said as he left. “Mrs. Jeffries will give you a fifteen-minute warning in case you lose track of the time.”

When she felt that she had gotten herself organized enough to make a good start the following morning, Lizzie took a break and called Martin to tell him that she had arrived safely.

“I was hoping you’d call,” he said. “What’s it like there?”

“The house is fabulous,” she said. “Just like in the book only grander, if you can believe it. Thanks for that book, by the way. It really gave me a good introduction to the place.”

“And what’s he like?”

“He’s not exactly a regular guy, but I like him,” she said. “And he’s smart—he loves my book.”

On the other end of the line she heard Martin’s laugh.

“I miss you,” she said.

“I know, sweetheart. I miss you too.”

She hadn’t noticed that it was dark outside until she hung up. There were several lamps in the library, as well as two large chandeliers filled with scores of tiny bulbs, and the fire, which was still crackling away. She walked to the dark windows and looked out across the stone terrace at the winter remnants of the garden. There had been no real sunset, no blaze of red or orange, just a silver streak of light left on the horizon.

“Dinner is in fifteen minutes, Dr. Manning.”

Lizzie jumped when Mrs. Jeffries spoke to her from the open door.

“Thank you,” she said. “Where do I go?”

“Straight across the hall,” Mrs. Jeffries answered, pointing past the double staircase that dominated the foyer of the Adam wing of the house.

The housekeeper seemed to be looking at her as if she was a great puzzle and Lizzie wondered if there was something odd about her appearance, or if the other woman was waiting for her to move in response to her announcement. She began to be uncomfortable under Mrs. Jeffries’ scrutiny, like a specimen in a Petri dish, until the other woman seemed to realize with a start that she was being rude and turned to leave the room.

“Thanks again,” Lizzie called after her. She wondered how long the other woman had been standing at the door watching her before speaking.

After dinner Lizzie found that the time difference and two days of travel were catching up with her, so she made her excuses and went to her room. She stood for a few minutes at the tall windows looking down the dark expanse to the sea below. She could barely make out the outline of the ruined stone wall in the distance and she became frustrated trying to mentally reconstruct the look of the original fortifications in the darkness.

“I hope there will be time to explore it all while I am here,” she said to herself as she got into bed. As she turned to pull the chain on the lamp near her bed she noticed that the Rossetti painting was on the wall near the door.

 

That night she had a dream. She was standing on the terrace at Hengemont; the garden was in full bloom. Beyond the garden, and the stone wall, and green fields dotted with sheep, lay the sea. A big square-rigger moved along under full sail. The sailor was returning home.

 

Lizzie turned in her bed and woke. She knew where she was; she was at George Hatton’s big rambling ancestral home, Hengemont. The house was absolutely silent and she was wide awake.

She had closed the curtains that faced the other wing of the house but left them open on the side facing down the slope to the Bristol Channel. She sat up in bed and looked out at the night sky, perfectly clear and scattered with stars. According to the clock it was 4:30 in the morning and the room was quite chilly. She got up and pulled on the robe that had fallen to the floor at the foot of the bed and then opened the door out into the hall.

A soft lamp glowed on a small table about halfway down the long hall, but the passage was otherwise empty and dark. Lizzie closed the door and went back to stand for a moment at the windows facing the sea. There was a lighthouse at Porlock Weir that blinked twice and then was dark, then blinked twice again and was dark. She counted the seconds between each double flash, a habit from her research days when she had spent several weeks sailing off the coast of Alaska. Eight seconds.

There were a few lights visible in the tiny village of Hengeport twinkling through the trees that stood between it and the house. She pulled the curtains back slightly from the other set of windows and looked across the courtyard to Hengemont’s Tudor wing; it was totally dark.

Lizzie crawled back into bed, taking with her the book that Martin had given her. In her dream she had seen the house as it looked in the book, surrounded by the bloom of summer, and not as she could actually see it in the chilly grayness of winter. She smiled to herself. She had always been very impressionable in her dreams and she enjoyed it when they cast a soft and romantic spell, as this one had.

How many people had crossed this patch of earth, she thought. How many lives lived, loves felt, tears dropped. She looked again at pictures of the house until she fell back to sleep with the light on and the book open.