She laughed and played like Coleridge's limber elf'Dancing and playing to itself - do you remember our letters of Christabel? She cared nothing for books, nothing. I wrote her small tales, and they were bound and printed, and I gave them to her, and she smiled sweetly and thanked me, and put them by. I never saw her read them for pleasure. She loved to ride, and to do archery, and played boys' games with her (so-called) brothers… and in the end married a visiting cousin she had tumbled in haystacks with as a tiny staggering little thing of Jive. I wanted her to have an untroubled life and so she did - but it is not mine, I am not of it, I am the spinster aunt who is not loved. …
So I am punished, in some sort, for keeping her from you.
Do you remember how I wrote to you of the riddle of the egg? As an eidolon of my solitude and self-possession which you threatened whether you would or no? And destroyed, my dear, meaning me nothing but good, I do believe and know. I wonder - if I had kept to my closedcastle, behind my motte-and-bailey defences - should I have been a greatpoet - as you are? I wonder - was my spirit rebuked by yours - as Caesar's was by Antony - or was I enlarged by your generosity as you intended? These things are all mixed and mingled - and we loved eachother -for eachother - only it was in the endforMaia (who will have nothing of her 'strange name' and is called p lain May, which becomes her).
I have been so angryfor so long - with all of us, with you, withB lanche, with my poor self. And now near the end "in calm of mind allpassion spent" I think of you again with clear love. I have been reading Samson Agonistes and came upon the dragon I always thought you were - as I was the 'tame villatic fowl' -
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame
And as an evening dragon came
Assailant on the perched roosts
And rusts in order ranged
Of tame villatic fowl-
Is not that fine? Did we not-did you not flame, and I catchfire?Shall w e survive and rise from our ashes? Like Milton's Phoenix?
that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embossed
That no second knows nor third
And lay erewhile a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teemed
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed
And though her body die, her fame survives
A secular bird, ages of lives.
I would rather have lived alone, so, if you would have the truth. But since that might not be - and is granted to almost none -I thank Godfor you - if there must be a Dragon - that He was You -
I must give up this writing. One more thing. Yourgrandson (and mine, most strange). His name is Walter and he chants verses to the amazement ofhis stable- and furrow-besotted parents. I have taught him much ofthe Ancient Mariner: he recites the passage of the blessing of the snakes, and thevision of the glittering eye of the ocean cast up to the moon, most feelingly, and his owneyes arebright with it. He is a strong boy, and will live.
I must close. If you are able or willing - please send me a sign that you have read this. I dare notask, if you forgive.
Christabel LaMotte"
There was silence. Maud's voice had begun clear, expressionless, like matt glass, and had ended with suppressed feeling. Leonora said, "Wow!" Cropper said, "I knew it. I knew it was something vast -" Hildebrand said, "I don't understand-" Euan said, "Unfortunately, illegitimate children couldn't inherit at that time. Or you, Maud, would be the outright owner of the whole mass of documents. I suspected something like this might be the case. Victorian families often looked after bastards in this way, hiding them in legitimate families to give them a decent chance-"
Blackadder said, "How strange for you, Maud, to turn out to be descended from both-how strangely appropriate to have been exploring all along the myth-no, the truth-of your own origins."
Everyone looked at Maud, who sat looking at the photograph. She said, "I have seen this before. We have one. She was my great-great-great-grandmother." Beatrice Nest was in tears. They rose to her eyes and flashed and fell. Maud put out a hand.
"Beatrice-"
"I'm sorry to be so silly. It's just so terrible to think-he can't ever have read it, can he? She wrote all that for no one. She must have waited for an answer-and none can have come-" Maud said, "You know Ellen. Why do you think she put it in the box-with her own love-letters-”
“And their hair," said Leonora. "And Christabel's hair, it must be, the blond-"
Beatrice said, "She didn't know what to do, perhaps. She didn't give it to him, and she didn't read it-I can imagine that-she just put it away-"
"For Maud," said Blackadder. "As it turns out. She preserved it, for Maud." Everyone looked at Maud, who sat whitely, looking at the picture, holding the manuscript.
Maud said, "I can't go on thinking. I must sleep. I'm exhausted. We shall think of all this in the morning. I don't know why it's such a shock. But." She turned to Roland. "Help me find a bedroom to sleep in. All these papers should go to Professor Blackadder, for safe-keeping. I'd like to keep the photograph, just tonight, if I may."
Roland and Maud sat side by side on the edge of a four-poster bed, hung about with William Morris golden lilies. They looked at the photograph of Maia's wedding-day, in the light of a candle, held in a silver chamber-candlestick. Because it was hard to see, their heads were close together, dark and pale, so that they could smell each other's hair, still full of the smells of the storm, rain and troubled clay and crushed and flying leafage. And underneath that, their own particular, separate human warmths.
Maia Bailey smiled up at them serenely. They read her face now in the light of Christabel's letter, and thus saw it, amongst all its silvery spangles and shine of ageing, as a happy confident face, wearing its thick wreath with a certain ease, and feeling pleasure, not drama, in the occasion.
"She looks like Christabel," said Maud. "You can see it."
"She looks like you," said Roland. He added, "She looks like Randolph Ash, too. The width of the brow. The width of the mouth. The end of the eyebrows, there."
"So I look like Randolph Henry Ash."
Roland touched her face. "I would never have seen it. But yes. The same things. Here, at the corner of the eyebrow. There, at the edge of the mouth. Now I have seen it, I shall always see it."
"I don't quite like it. There's something unnaturally determined about it all. Daemonic. I feel they have taken me over.”
“One always feels like that about ancestors. Even very humble ones, if one has the luck to know them." He stroked her wet hair, gently, absently. Maud said, "What next?”
“How do you mean, what next?”
“What happens next? To us?”
“You will have a lot of legal problems. And a lot of editing to do. I-I have made some plans.”
“I thought-we might edit the letters together, you and I?”
“That's generous, but not necessary. You turn out to be a central figure in this story. I only got into it by stealing, in the first place.