The Muniment Room and a Discovery #2
Beyond them was something interesting enough to make me stop: a collection of forty or fifty boxes, all of the same size, covered in pretty paper—floral for the most part.
There were little labels on some of them and I went close enough to read one.
Heart Reclaimed: A Novel by Seraphina Blythe.
I lifted the lid and peeked inside: a stack of paper with typewritten text all over it, a manuscript.
I remembered Mum telling me that the Blythes had all been writers, all except Percy.
I held the lamp higher so that I could take in the entire collection of boxes, smiling in wonder.
These were Saffy’s stories. She was so prolific.
It oppressed me, in some way, to see them all huddled down here together: stories and dreams, people and places invested at one time with great energy and industry, only to be left in the dark over years to turn back into dust. Another label read MARRIAGE TO MATTHEW DE COURCY.
The publisher in me couldn’t help it; I lifted the lid and pulled the papers from inside.
This one didn’t contain a manuscript, though; it was a collection of assorted papers—research, I supposed.
Old sketches—wedding dresses, floral arrangements—newspaper clippings describing various society weddings, scribbled notes as to orders of service, and then, further down, a 1924 notice of the engagement of Seraphina Grace Blythe and Matthew John de Courcy.
I set the papers down. This was research, but not for a novel.
This box contained the planning for Saffy’s own wedding that never was.
I put the lid back on and stepped away, guilty suddenly for my intrusion.
It struck me then that every item in this room was the remnant of a bigger story, the lamps, the vases, the books, Saffy’s floral boxes.
The muniment room was a tomb, just like those in ancient times.
A pharaoh’s dark, cool tomb where precious things went to be forgotten.
By the time I reached the table at the very end, I felt as if I’d walked a marathon through Alice’s Wonderland.
It was a surprise, then, when I turned around, to see that the swaying lightbulb, the door—carefully propped open with a wooden box—was only forty-five feet or so behind me.
I found the notebooks just where Percy had said they’d be and, just as she’d said, piled into boxes, as if someone had walked along Raymond Blythe’s study shelves and desk, swept everything in together, then left them here.
I understood that there were other concerns during the war; nonetheless, it seemed odd that neither of the twins had found time to return in the decades since.
Raymond Blythe’s notebooks, his journals and letters, deserved to be on display in a library somewhere, protected and valued, available for scholars to access for many years to come.
Percy, in particular, I’d have thought, with her keen eye to posterity, would have sought to protect her father’s legacy.
I set my lamp at the back of the desk, far enough away so that I wouldn’t accidentally knock it, and slid the boxes from beneath the table, lifting them one by one onto the chair and rummaging until I found the journals spanning 1916 to 1920.
Raymond Blythe had helpfully labeled each with the year, and it didn’t take long before I had 1917 spread out before me.
I took my notebook from my bag and began jotting down anything I could think of that might be helpful for the article.
Every so often I paused, just so that I could appreciate again that these were actually his journals, that this looping script, these ideas and sentiments, had originated with the great man himself.
Can I possibly convey here, with only words at my disposal, the incredible moment when I turned that fateful page and sensed a shift in the scrawl beneath my fingers?
The handwriting was heavier, more purposeful; the script looked to have been written faster: lines and lines, filling each page, and when I bent closer, began to decipher the rough scrawl, I realized, with a thrill that started deep inside my heart, that this was the first draft of the Mud Man.
Seventy-five years later, I was witnessing the birth of a classic.
Page after page I turned, scanning the text, devouring it, delighting in the small changes as I compared what was written with my memories of the published text.
At length, I reached the end, and although I knew I shouldn’t, I laid my open palm across the final page, closed my eyes, and focused on the pen marks beneath my skin.
And that was when I felt it: the small ridge running down the side of the page, about an inch from the outer margin.
Something had been tucked between the journal’s leather cover and its final page.
I turned it over, and there it was, a stiff piece of paper with scalloped serrations around the rim, the sort found in an expensive correspondence set. It had been folded in half.
Was there ever any chance I wasn’t going to open it? I doubt it. I didn’t have a very good track record with leaving letters unread, and the moment I saw it something began to caper beneath my skin. I felt eyes upon me, eyes in the dark, urging me to look inside.
It was neatly handwritten but faded, and I had to hold it close to the lamp to make out the words. It picked up midsentence, a single sheet in a longer letter:
… don’t need me to tell you that it’s a wonderful story.
Never before has your writing taken the reader on such a vivid journey.
The writing is rich and the tale itself captures, with an almost eerie prescience, Man’s eternal quest to shed the past and move beyond old, regrettable actions.
The girl, Jane, is a particularly moving creature, her situation on the verge of adulthood perfectly rendered.
I couldn’t help noticing, however, as I read the manuscript, deep similarities to another story with which we’re both familiar.
For that reason, and knowing you to be a fair and a kind man, I must beseech you, as much for your own sake as for the other, not to publish The True History of the Mud Man.
You know as well as I do that it is not your story to tell.
It is not too late to withdraw the manuscript.
I fear that if you do not, the consequences will be of a most distressing
I turned it over but there was nothing further. I searched the notebook for the rest. Flicked back through the pages, even held it by the spine and shook it very carefully. Nothing.
But what could it mean? Which similarities? Which other story? What consequences? And who had seen fit to deliver such a warning?
A shuffling in the corridor. I sat stone-still, listening. Someone was coming. My heart hammered in my chest; the letter shook between my fingertips.
A split second of indecision, then I stuffed it inside my notebook and pressed the cover flat. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Percy Blythe and her cane silhouetted in the doorway.