The Secrets of Lizzie Borden (6 page)

But the day I cherish most of all is the day when the sun
finally
shone, the day he took me to Glastonbury. He showed me where the graves of King Arthur and golden-haired Guinevere had been discovered in the time of Henry II, buried sixteen feet down in the hollowed-out trunk of a mighty oak tree. Arthur was a giant of a man, his great and noble skull bashed in by at least ten mortal blows inflicted in his final battle, and Guinevere, small and delicate boned, lay humbly like a dog at his feet with her long blond hair tangled in her husband's bones, like clinging golden vines twined around his ankles. When an awestruck young monk reached out to touch a lock it crumbled into dust. We rented tin cups from a vendor and drank of the red-tinged iron-rich waters from the Chalice Well that are reputed to possess healing powers. As we sipped he told me the legend. Joseph of Arimathea had brought the Holy Grail—the cup that Jesus Christ drank from at the Last Supper and was afterward used to catch his blood as he died upon the cross—with him to Glastonbury, to lay the foundation for the Christian faith in Britain. To hide it from tenacious pagans and thieves, he had buried it within the hill, and the waters of the spring had ever since passed over the Grail and been dyed red and imbued with miraculous powers by the holy blood. We saw the crutches and canes of former cripples and blind men that hung upon the gates as proof.

“You see, the sun really does shine in England; it is shining for you today,” he said, then added, more boldly, reaching out to caress my hair beneath the bluebell-covered brim of my straw hat, “I shall never forget the way it teases out the golden glints in your fiery hair, Lizbeth.”

With him I felt reborn, reinvented. He even gave me a new name—Lizbeth. I didn't have the heart to disillusion him by telling him that I was born just plain Lizzie, not even traditional, ordinary Elizabeth; I let him believe it was just a family nickname.

“
Lizzie
sounds like a barmaid, a servant girl,” he said a tad disdainfully, scrunching up his nose as though he smelled something bad. “The world is full of Elizabeths, but
Lizbeth
is rarer. It has the spark of drama; in its two syllables are married elegance and grandeur!
Lizzie be gone!
” He snapped his fingers in the air. “To me you shall
always
be
Lizbeth!
”

He made a sketch of Glastonbury Abbey for me. I have it still, along with the book—
our
book—the one that led us to meet. Never believe for an instant that books aren't magic; they have the power to bring people together. But I will not tell you its name either. Let the book have its own life; let it fade quietly into obscurity or be remembered by posterity on its own merits. No connection with me shall ordain its fate.

I remember the way his hand moved over the page of his sketchbook, so confident, so sure, the charcoal pencil leaving a black smudge against his calloused finger. He was an architect after all; he understood the beauty of a line, a curve, an arch. He told me of the Abbey's history and made me appreciate, and see, Glastonbury with new eyes not obscured by the rosy-tinted spectacles of romance and legends of Avalon and Arthur. And we talked of other cathedrals in other countries, and when I saw them later, on my own, and purchased pictures of them to take back home with me, to cover my naked walls, I remembered every word he had told me about their creation and history.

He showed me the thorn tree that supposedly sprang from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea when he first set foot on Glastonbury and had ever since flowered every Christmas. He told me how carolers still came to sing its praises and a flowering branch was presented each year at Christmastime to Queen Victoria. We stood in its verdant shadows and I felt his hand upon my waist, so light, so delicate, almost
reverent
—it
was
a sacred place, so how fitting that his touch should be just so! Through the blue satin sash and my eyelet dress of an even lighter blue and the rigid whalebone of my corset beneath, his fingertips felt like ghosts, so feathery light, so gently elusive, and intangible that I have at times wondered if I only imagined their caress. I wanted them to
burn
through, to
brand
me, so I could actually
feel
his fingers against my flesh just as their faint memory is still seared there. I wanted more and I thought, in time, I would have it. So slowly that time seemed almost to stop, he leaned down and pressed his lips lingeringly to mine in the tenderest kiss I have ever known.

My experience of kisses has been limited but varied. I have had rougher, clumsier, lustier, probing kisses where tongues touched, saliva mingled, and teeth scraped, but none of them has ever matched, or even come close to, the tender kiss of the blond, blue-eyed architect beneath the thorn tree at Glastonbury.

For me, it is my one unsullied moment of breathless wonder that no one can ever spoil or take away from me. I have never told anyone. I have kept it locked close, zealously guarded, within my heart, cherished it, and lived on it every day of my life. By the time you read these words I will be dead, so I will not hear you if you laugh and scoff at this silly old maid and her romantic notions and dreams. Perhaps I am overly sentimental. Men tend to take a different view of such matters; perhaps to him it was just a kiss and he went on to kiss many other American girls beneath that thorn tree. I do not know; nor do I want to. I cherish my illusion, if illusion it was.

Later, after we had our picnic lunch, he lay back on the warm green grass with his head in my lap, his hat shading his eyes from the summer sun, and we talked of our respective countries. He had been to America before, to study and on occasional business trips, but he always pined for England the whole time he was away.

He recited a poem to me, his favorite, by a Scottish poet, Alan Cunningham, written about the Stuart monarchs, exiled from their native land and longing to return. His mother had embroidered it and had it framed for him and it always hung on his bedroom wall wherever he went in the world to remind him of home.

Despite all the rash promises made as I knelt at my father's feet before I left home, I would have gladly stayed in England with my beloved forever if only he had asked me to. No one will ever know how much I wanted to. I would have, I know, regretted being seen as a traitor, disloyal to my blood, but I wanted a life of my own—a life of color and excitement and wonder and love! I was tired of seeing the world through the window of printed words and pictures frozen in time. I wanted to see it all with my
own
eyes in vibrant, rich, full, blazing color—living, breathing, moving life, not just still black-and-white or sepia images capturing only one motionless moment in time. I wanted to reach out and
touch
life with my
own
hands, and to breathe it all deep into
my
lungs. I wanted to have my
own
experiences; I was tired of making do with the siphoned, secondhand recollections of others who went out into the world and actually
did
things,
wonderful, exciting things,
while I stayed home like a good and obedient daughter and just read about them in memoirs and magazines. And Love . . . I thought Love had forgotten me, and long ago passed me by as unworthy, I never thought, I never expected, that it would remember me, and bring me someone who suited me so splendidly. If I had dreamed him he could not have been more perfect! He was like the hero of a novel stepped out from between the covers of a book—he was the architect of my dreams!

That night in the ballroom of his uncle's London house I wore my first ball gown—a delicate shimmering peach taffeta with yards of trailing skirt and a bustle in back, with ruffles on the sleeves and skirt, and matching satin dancing slippers with roses on the toes and peach silk stockings. Anna, despite her disdain for me, loved to play with hair, and deigned to arrange mine in a mound of glossy, gleaming red curls artfully woven through with peach ribbons and strands of delicate seed pearls, leaving one long ringlet to fall over my bare right shoulder.

I danced all night in the warm circle of his arms. I thought it was the safest and most wonderful place in the world and there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
I am happy here!
my eyes and my heart kept blissfully sighing.

I stood on the terrace at his side with his cloak draped over my shoulders, the white silk lining icily delicious against my bare skin, and, together, we watched the sun rise. And then I went back to the hotel and to bed, though I wasn't the least bit tired and was much too restless to even
think
of sleeping. The waltzes we had danced to still played in my mind, and my legs would not stay still; I twisted and turned in my bed and hugged my pillow close, as if I still danced with him. And while Anna slept obliviously in the bed beside mine, so close I could have reached out and tweaked her proud patrician nose, beneath the covers I boldly lifted my nightgown all the way to my chin and touched myself and pretended that it was
his
hands upon me, boldly and tenderly by turns caressing my passion-inflamed breasts and the hot pink petals of my womanhood.

He never told me that he loved me, that is true, and I was never bold or shameless enough to tell him that I loved him, but even without the words, we both knew. Tentatively, I confided my hopes by letter to Emma; my heart welled to bursting and I
needed
the relief of confession and there was no one else I could trust, but she betrayed me. Just like Judas, my
sister
betrayed me, for
nothing,
not even a pittance of silver. I was dismissed as a fool, a gullible girl who had read too many romance novels, an innocent abroad who knew
nothing
about life, love, the world, and the liars and beasts called “men.” She made my wonderful, kind, gentle, courteous, thoroughly respectable architect sound like the worst kind of cad. My cheeks still burn at the memory of her stinging words even after all these years. She—and Father—never let me forget what they called “my foolishness” and how I “lost my head” over “
that Englishman
.” Their words fairly dripped with scathing scorn like venom whenever they spoke of him.

The last time I saw him he was walking away from me, after seeing me and my party safely aboard the train that would take us on the next stage of our journey. He was most solicitous and even brought a selection of newspapers and magazines and a box of chocolates to help us pass the time. And he had thoughtfully written out a list of sights for us to see in France and Italy, but it was of interest only to me; the others could talk of nothing but dresses and hats and the high-society beaus they hoped to catch.

I can see him now, walking away from me, out of my life, his broad shoulders bent against the wind, his right hand holding his derby clamped tight upon his head, and his stormy gray overcoat flapping like wild-goose wings about his legs. I couldn't stay and he couldn't go with me; we had to say good-bye. He promised he would write to me, and there was something in his eyes and the way his lips lingered when he kissed my hand that told me I would one day soon see the words I so longed to hear set down in black and white. That he would say the words that I, as a woman, could not say.

 

In Paris everyone seemed to be in love, or at least in lustful thrall, and brazenly unafraid of showing it. It seemed everywhere I looked I saw couples strolling arm in arm, women laying their heads upon their escorts' strong shoulders, or sitting opposite them at small tables for two in sidewalk cafés, leaning toward each other, holding hands, or even boldly daring to kiss in broad daylight on the boulevard or a park bench.

Carrie, Anna, and Nellie turned up their noses at the notion of visiting the Louvre and Notre Dame, and instead rushed off to the dress shops. They could not hail a cab or find a post office without imploring help from some English-speaking bystander, but they could say “Where are the dress shops?” in four different languages. And poor Miss Mowbry indignantly took to her bed and refused to leave it for days after an “impertinent waiter” suggested she try the
escargots
. When she accepted his recommendation “with pleasure” he smilingly set a plate of
snails
before her, bidding her, “
Bon apétit,
madame.”

“Young man, in America we do not
eat
snails; we
step
on them!” she witheringly reprimanded him. “Take these away and dispose of them properly!” she commanded, then, nose high in the air, retreated grandly to her hotel room and ordered tea and toast sent up.