‘And he has asked you to marry him, supposing all this can be achieved?’
‘Not yet. Nor formally. But he says he will, and when he does I will accept him. Obviously. Do you disapprove, Mama?’
‘Do you care whether I do or not?’
Allegra laughed. ‘No!’
‘Then I would be wasting my energy to do so, would I not? No, I am content. Though he has no title, he is wealthy – I know you do not concern yourself with that, and you are lucky to be permitted such a luxury. He knows the truth of our origins and that does not trouble him, so we must pay him a similar compliment. Your future will be secure, and you need have no secrets from him, which is fortunate, for secrets in marriage are poison. As for your happiness, it is your own concern, and his.’
‘Thank you, Mama.’ Allegra rose, and embraced her, and after a moment of stiffness Leontina relaxed into her arms. But only for a second or two, and then she whisked herself away.
48
Schiavi had come to see Max again, much to Mr Wicken’s disgust, but it had only been a brief visit. Matters were in hand, and moving fast, and there would be more solid news in a couple of days, he said. The old man had come to seek more precise details of what Max’s fake father should reveal, and Max had given them, with extreme care. He knew exactly what he had said, and what he had not said, and could not possibly be mistaken, at such a short distance of time and on such an important matter for his own lifelong happiness. No secrets had been revealed, he was sure of that. It would be madness on his part to mention any names apart from those of his adoptive parents, since these were facts easily ascertained by anyone who cared to enquire a little into the matter.
Three agonising days had passed, made harder to bear by the unwisdom of seeing Allegra or even communicating with her further until matters were resolved, and now at the end of them Max was holding an extraordinary document, which he had read a dozen times and still could scarcely credit. The man Schiavi had found – Max had his name now; it was Jacques Martin – hadsigned an affidavit before a lawyer. Money had been transmitted to him on Max’s behalf; a goodly sum. Blackmail must always be a risk, of course, and the affidavit was designed to protect against that, since if the man later denied the truth of what he now claimed in order to gain more payment, he would make himself a perjurer.
But it wasn’t the affidavit Max was staring at. He was looking at astory, which Schiavi had assured him would appear in a noted literary journal when it was next published, later in the week.
What he was holding was a fair copy of a manuscript, in an assured and flowing hand. When he first read it, he had had no idea how the elderly and to all appearances impoverished Italian had come in contact with the writer, whose name was somewhat celebrated – he was a Mr Spry, a poet and essayist of liberal sympathies, an abolitionist and friend of Wilberforce, of whom Max had heard – nor how in the name of heaven he had induced him to produce the tale. But even that wasn’t what arrested him so, and made him unable to look away.
It would have a title, he supposed, when it appeared in the magazine. But as he saw it now, handwritten, it simply began in a confiding way, as if it were a conversation, a yarn told round a fire one winter night:
I hope readers will permit me to relate an affecting story – a true tale – that caught my attention recently. It is a matter of little import, perhaps; just a glimpse of a brief moment shared by two strangers in our great and terrible city. Certainly, it does not deal with persons of elevated standing, for which I hope I may be pardoned by readers who take a broad and sympathetic view of who does and does not deserve consideration in this life. It has stayed with me sinceI heard it, and touched me beyond what I might have expected.
I was crossing Westminster Bridge early one morning not long since, having, I confess, stayed up all night talking and drinking in congenial literary company, when I observed a man alone, standing still, looking down into the dark, swirling water. He was African or Caribbean, tidily dressed, of much my own age, which is to say not young nor old either, and I felt a sudden sharp apprehension that he might be planning to make away with himself due to an attack of despair. So I stopped, as anyone might. The bridge was quiet, soon after dawn, and we were utterly isolated upon it, the only two people in the world, just for a space.
He saw me, of course, and to my surprise he smiled. ‘You think I’m going to throw myself in the river,’ he said, his accent soft and pleasing to the ear. ‘You need not concern yourself, sir – I am not. I am merely looking the last upon this place, before I leave it forever. My son is here, and I have seen him for the first time, though we have not exchanged two words. Now I must go and never return, for his dear sake.’
Now, I am a fond father myself, and so these words could not fail to strike me with some force. I stopped by him, looking out over the water or at his face, and with no need of persuasion he told me the story of his life, or the parts of it he cared to share with a chance-met stranger.
He was from Martinique in the Caribbean, he said, an island that my learned readers will know has passed between England and France more than once in its turbulent recent history. His father was the owner of a prosperous sugar plantation, an Englishman, and his mother a slave, his bound possession. (If there is any shame in this part of the story; you may judge for yourself, wise reader, where it should truly lie, I think.)He did not wish to speak of that; his poor mother was dead, and he had grown up a free man.
When very young, he had met a girl similarly circumstanced to himself, a maidservant, and fallen in love with her and she with him, as young people will do, no matter where or when. He admitted that they had shared a brief, irregular connection, but asserted that they had planned to marry honourably. Before they could do so, he was taken up one dreadful night and pressed into His Majesty’s Navy. He was carried far away from his home and his friends, much against his will, and took part in many actions at sea, any of which could have ended his life. They did not, by pure chance, though he bore scars gained in our ungrateful nation’s service, which he showed me. He did well, making the best of his new circumstances, and found a friend in the good chaplain on the ship, learning to read and write from him, expanding his horizons. But he never forgot his love, and at last after several years he was able to return home, hoping but not really believing thatshemight still be waiting for him.
She was not. There had been a child – he learned that easily enough – a fine, healthy boy, but a few years after his birth, the infant and his mother had left the island, on a British ship bound for London. He had no idea why such an extraordinary thing had occurred, nor whether his lost family had survived the voyage, nor where they had gone if they had. He came here, chasing them, full of anxiety, but years too late. He could not find them.
He resumed his life at sea, having developed a taste for it, and whenever he had an opportunity he came again to our great capital, home to a million teeming people of all races and nations, and searched. He’d never married, never forgotten his youthful sweetheart, never settled in one place.
He had come here now, in this year of 1805, still with that fixed purpose.
But this time was different. While taking refreshment in a tavern, for undoubtedly hopeless searching is thirsty work, he encountered by purest chance a man whoseaccent was similar to his own, and fell gladly into speech with him, as travellers far from home often do. This familiar stranger told him that he’d long been a servant, in the family of an Englishman of rank named S----in, who was married to a Creole woman from their own island. The couple were both dead now, and he’d moved on to another household, but in later life, he recounted, they had adopted a child belonging to another of their servants, and left their estate and all their fortune to him, and their fine house in Town. Imagine it, the man said; imagine a boy from the Caribbean like us, a servant’s bastard brat, becoming an English gentleman of fortune. And he said the name of the servant woman, making a coarse jest at her expense.
It was his love’s name. Imagine the powerfully mixed sensations that surged through him when he heard it. My interlocutor kept his temper, with difficulty, and ascertained to his great pain that she was long dead, of some epidemic disease. But his son lived, and now he had his name and direction, burned upon his brain.
He went there – can you doubt it? – to a grand square in Mayfair, and stood many hours in the summer’s heat, a wait that did not seem long to him after so many fruitless years, and watched. He knew it might take days, and still be in vain. But no – at last he saw his son, tall and strong, handsome and finely dressed, but still recognisably his, he thought, coming out and getting into his shining phaeton, taking the reins of a team of blood horses and driving off. Greys, they were, high-steppers. Beautiful beasts, costly. As in a dream, he watched him go.
‘You did not think to speak to him, to make yourself known?’ I asked, knowing the answer before I spoke.
He shook his head, regret and resignation plain upon his face. ‘I could not. He is a gentleman, he has a wonderful life, such as I can only imagine. I could not intrude on that. But I was glad to see him all the same,’ he told me. ‘My Celestine would have been so proud. I only wish she had lived to stand at my side and see it too, and to walk away with me as I leave this land forever.’
And he shook my hand, and wished me well, wishes which I returned in full measure, and I watched as hevanished in an instant into the city which he was so soon to leave – on the next morning’s tide, he had told me. And I knew he would never come back.
I have his name, though I shall not reproduce it here, and the name of his ship, which I have his permission to share, upon application to me and at my own discretion. It may be that someone – who knows? – might chance to read this brief tale and find himself touched by it, as your humble servant was, or even more deeply and more nearly.
Max had read the pages a dozen times, and still they said the same. It was incredible. He’d wondered, upon first reading, if the detail of the chance-met servant might be true, and that was where the man from Martinique, or the writer, or Schiavi, orsomebody, had gained Celestine’s name. Because certainlyhehad never spoken it, except to Allegra, whom he trusted with his life. He clung to this comforting idea for a while, though the sheer coincidence of it made his head ache a little.
But Schiavi, when he had enquired as to how theextraordinary story came to be written, said that was not so. He was involved, he explained, in Italian politics – the hope of that suffering country gaining independence once the Corsican tyrant was overthrown – and thus he had met others who shared the same radical interests, including Mr Spry. The author had become a friend over the course of years, and so now he had asked him to write the tale, as a favour, in whatever manner he thought best once he had been given the bare bones of it.
