Mona was delighted, and broke into giggles. She went round the boxes, and eased down on her knees, careful not to shake the baby. The baby was still crying. The baby was flip-flopping like crazy. It was the smell, wasn’t it? As much as all the foolish talk and imagining and picturing. She hummed to the baby … then sang softly:
“ ‘Bring flowers of the fairest, bring flowers of the rarest, from garden and woodland and hillside and dale!’ ” It was the gayest, sweetest hymn she knew, one that Gifford had taught her to sing, the hymn from the Maytime. “ ‘Our full hearts are swelling, our glad voices telling the tale of the loveliest rose of the dale!’ ”
“Why, Mona Mayfair, you’ve got a voice.”
“Every Mayfair has a voice, Mary Jane. But really I haven’t. Not like my mother did, or Gifford. You should have heard them. They were real sopranos. My voice is low.”
She hummed the tune now without the words, picturing the forests, and the green land, and flowers. “ ‘Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, queen of the angels, queen of the May. Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today….’ ”
She rocked on her knees, her hand on her belly, the baby rocking gently with the music, her red hair all around her now, looking magnificent in the water of the womb, as if it were orange ink dropped into water, billowing out, that weightless, that translucent, that beautiful. Such tiny feet and tiny fingers. What color are your eyes, Morrigan?
I can’t see my eyes, Mama, I can see only what you see, Mama.
“Hey, wake up, I’m scared you’re gonna fall.”
“Oh yes. I’m glad you called me back, Mary Jane, you did right to call me back, but I pray to heaven and the Blessed Mary Ever Virgin that this baby has green eyes like mine. What do you think?”
“Couldn’t be a better color!” Mary Jane declared.
Mona laid her hands on the cardboard box in front of her. This was the right one. It reeked of him. Had he written these sheets in his own blood? And to think his body was down there. I ought to dig up that body. I mean, everything is changed now, Rowan and Michael are going to have to accept that, either that or I’m simply not going to tell them, I mean, this is an entirely new development and this one concerns me.
“What bodies are we going to dig up?” asked Mary Jane with a puckered frown.
“Oh, stop reading my mind! Don’t be a Mayfair bitch, be a Mayfair witch. Help me with this box.”
Mona ripped at the tape with her fingernails and pried back the cardboard.
“Mona, I don’t know, this is somebody else’s stuff.”
“Yesssss,” said Mona. “But this somebody else is part of my heritage, this somebody else has her own branch on this tree, and up through the tree from its roots runs this potent fluid, our lifeblood, and he was part of it, he lived in it, you might say, yes, ancient, and long-lived and forever, sort of like trees. Mary Jane, you know trees are the longest-lived things on earth?”
“Yeah, I know that,” she said. “There’s trees down near Fontevrault that are so big???? I mean there’s cypress trees down there with knees sticking up out of the water?”
“Shhhh,” said Mona. She had pushed back all the brown wrapping—this thing was packed like it had to carry the Marie Antoinette china all the way to Iceland—and she saw the first page of a loose stack covered in a thin plastic, and bound with a thick rubber band. Scrawl, all right, spidery scrawl, with great long l’s and t’s and y’s, and little vowels that were in some cases no more than dots. But she could read it.
She made her hand a claw and tore the plastic. “Mona Mayfair!”
“Guts, girl!” said Mona. “There’s a purpose to what I do. Will you be my ally and confidante, or do you wish, right now, to abandon me? The cable TV in this house gets every channel, you can go to your room, and watch TV, if you don’t want to be with me, or take a swim outside, or pick flowers, or dig for bodies under the tree—”
“I want to be your ally and confidante.”
“Put your hand on this, then, country cousin. You feel anything?”
“Oooooh!”
“He wrote it. You are looking at the writing of a certified nonhuman! Behold.”