incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

Kit's letter of the 26th has been taken by some of my friends as setting up a quest for her mother in Faerie, which I don't really understand; she says she's going to try for a Sight, but that doesn't to me suggest either that she's looking in Faerie or going there. And Aunt Louisa says she'll write a letter and Kit knew to whom; I figured it was Sir George, a very non-mystical kind of person.

I am amused that the manuscript we have is the collection they gathered "to show our children"; here, Diccon, read a moderately explicit account of your conception!

Finally, Kit mentions that Richard wants to offer a rebuilt Grey Hound to Mrs. Coslick as a gift, if she's willing. (Still dissatisfied that that happened.)

From Susan's November letter, it seems likely that in August (when Kit came to be with her during labor and delivery), Kit had not found her mother yet, as she describes Kit as "thin and worn and haunted-looking." I can't imagine she'd done so since, either, as it was not mentioned.

Another loose end: Susan cannot find Eleanor and David's son (which I suspect means Eleanor did not survive).

A lovely bit about the effect of writing:

You were right, after all, to want me to give knowledge of my heart into your keeping; until I did so, I didn't know what was in it myself.

Anyway. Susan arrived in Baltimore, with baby and her faithful maid Alice, who has literally never before appeared on-page; meets with James's doctor, who tells her that James is physically not strong; and then goes out to see James, in a sequence that's just so beautifully written:

Kitty, I remember what happened next as if it were something I imagined while being read a fairy-tale. I have seen these things and places since that first time, and they are subtly different, both more and less so than twice-seen sights always are. Forgive me for the quality it gives the narrative, because all the lines I want to write seem to have been stolen from the stories we used to tell each other at school, late at night when one of us couldn't sleep.

And then they're reunited and it makes me so happy, and they live happily ever after in Wisconsin. <3

Finally, the book title appears in an Engels quote, which I will further excerpt:

Freedom does not lie in the fancied independence of natural laws but in the knowledge of these laws [...] Freedom of will, therefore, means nothing other than the ability to decide, when in possession of a knowledge of the facts. Thus the freer the judgment of a man is in regard to a definite issue, with so much greater necessity will the substance of this judgment be determined [...]

Which is both paradoxical on its face and somehow sensible, at least within certain limitations? I don't know, I am out of practice in writing about this book.

Richard's journal recounts the first part of events on the solstice. He came to Cauldhurst and hid until James arrived, and then helped him burn the house down, destroying the evidence of the "plot" against the Government.

He, unlike James, loves the house and is grieved to see it destroyed, resulting in this rather lovely and painful paragraph:

Cauldhurst burned, not like the Grey Hound, but in its own way: carefully, with attention to detail, as if it were intelligent and aware and wanted to take its time consuming each morsel of history. A tongue of flame would appear in a window and then vanish, as if it were waving at us; saying hello and asking if it were doing well enough. We watched.

James confronts the members of the Club and moves away to be hunted; Richard shadows him and finds Henry in the woods. (They did not have time to discuss how Henry found out.) Richard tried to get him to leave but was distracted by having lost track of James temporarily. They find him again confronted by Alan and Eleanor Tournier and other members of the Club.

Alan evens the fight between James and Andrew (who, by the way, is carrying a bow and arrow, not a sword) by pulverizing James's hands; James forbids Richard and Henry to intervene. James then tells Alan about Eleanor's efforts to defeat his plans; Eleanor tells Alan to just kill James; and as Alan moves forward to do so, Richard and Henry reveal themselves, as do Wye and Clayborough (who Richard appears to have enlisted, and who I suppose may have been the way Henry found out).

Alan briefly slides away from the ensuing standoff, long enough for James to leave to try and get the hunt started again. Alan comes back and targets Eleanor; Henry steps in front of her and is shot in the middle of the chest. Alan uses his second pistol to shoot Eleanor in the throat, gravely wounding her; RIchard shoots him in the stomach with one of his pistols, and Wye kills another man.

Then the Home Office arrives.

The one called Cliff looked around and said, "We have one coach. Three of them are still alive. We'll need a second one to get them all to hospital. Go arrange for it, Potter." He looked around, frowning. "Who should we take first?"

I still had a loaded, cocked pistol in my hand. I used it. "No need to take this one," I said. "He's dead."

Richard says that he absolutely knew what he was doing, and "remember(s) a moment of terrible clarity when the only action I could take was laid out for me as if by a voice whispering in my ear." Richard having previously "called out to the Powers that might protect me," that "as if" is signposting another instance of ambiguous magic; Lee had previously said that Richard had power, after all.

However, Richard's memory fragments thereafter, leading to this cliffhanger:

(...) I know that I found James, and Andrew, and I have some memories of what happened then, but none of these memories are organized.

Susan's journal entry suggests that she is waiting for news:

I'm listening always, as long as I can stay awake, under the chatter of sympathy callers and family grieving, for silence, and for a sound that will interrupt it that isn't any of the sounds that distract me now.

And otherwise beautifully conveys the emotional state she finds herself in:

It's difficult to concentrate. I am being sympathized at; I can't think of any other way to put it. Aunt Louisa flutters like a consumptive pigeon, cooing Poor dear, poor dear—I wish I knew if I've replied to her. I look at her when she does it, the way cats do when they want you to know that they're trying to be interested in your concerns.

Susan, my beloved (sympathetic).

Anyway, to go back to Henry: I'm provisionally okay with his death as an instance of people on our protagonists' side also having their own motivations and acting on them. Chivalry and impulsivity are unquestionably in character for him, and are fundamentally incompatible with the situation he dove into. I do not say that he deserved it, because he certainly did not; but I think it does say something about him and the larger themes in a way that Coslick's death didn't, to me. I still reserve the right to change my mind if we learn more, however.

A letter from Susan to Kit because, "If I am killed, you should know about the things I've done in the last day, because, admit it, it would drive you insane not to know."

This is where James's letter of yesterday comes in—Sir George shows it to Susan. Who has enlisted Thomas Cavanaugh to get James out of the country if he lives, and who admits to him that she is pregnant with James's child. And the reread has made me pay attention to dates: it has been two weeks, which makes it very plot-convenient that she already has morning sickness, let alone know that she is pregnant. People on another forum pointed out that it's hard to believe that this is how she breaks the news to Kit, as well, which I think is very fair.

James writes to Susan in one of the most important sections of the whole book to me; my booklog is in a very sad way at the moment, but as I said there, I really did read parts of this on our wedding day.

I'm interested, though, that the new form of love I've added to my life since then—the love of parent for children—I would not classify as giving me freedom. It is expansive, giving me new things to discover about myself and to grow into; but the amount and kind of responsibility precludes freedom. But I do believe that love (of whatever variety) between peers should be freeing. I'm not quite willing to declare that if it isn't, it's not actually love, but that's more because I think the resulting definitional disputes would distract from the substance of the point.

(I want my love for my children to be freeing, for me to have successfully demonstrated it by giving them the foundation and tools to be their own best selves. Time will tell.)

Anyway! Not quite where I expected to end up when I sat down with my laptop, but there it is.

Back in 1849, I was surprised again at James saying that he doesn't know if Susan loves him. (I'd noticed this before, when he wrote to Richard, I just didn't comment on it.) I suppose it's true that she never actually said it, and her answer to "Will you have breakfast with me for the rest of my life?" was "Probably"; but it really had the emotional impact of a confession of love to me, and shortly after that, he said, "I've been given everything I most want. My brother's forgiveness. Your love. And it only makes me afraid of what will be taken away, to pay for them." (This is all from December 8; emphasis added.) I think this is a combination of his supersition and wanting to ensure her maximum freedom, since that's the theme and all (of his relationship to her and of the book).

The encounter with Andrew at the fencing club: I wish for something half as vivid and telling about Alan Tournier as

This man reminded me of nothing so much as an eagle in captivity, ragged, angry, hunching on his perch hoarding his strength for the strike of beak and talons that will free him.

Also: as I used to say about Denethor, that is bad parenting!

Finally, a tiny Marx cameo. I wonder why Engels and not Marx? The wifi on this boat is bad enough that I'm not going to try and figure it out.

Susan and James get Kit's last two letters, the one about her discovery in the cellar and the one with the deductions about the various conflicting desires of their enemies. James neatly addresses my objections from last time, namely:

Andrew's existence vis-a-vis Cauldhurt, with regard to Alan's plan: "I'm supposed to take care of that, one way or another. Either Andrew does me in at winter solstice and Tournier brings evidence against him for it, or I kill Andrew first and Tournier slays me, just too late to save the worthy patriarch." It's very easy for me to believe that the Crown could deem property of a "traitor" forfeit even without a formal guilty verdict (as I feel confident that one could not try a dead man in 1849 England).

Eleanor's supposed motive: "most of all, she wants to spoil her brother's game, because he ruined hers" by killing David. Whether or not she actually loved David, he was her playing piece; moreover, she and Alan have a poisonously bad relationship as shown during James's captivity.

(Susan says, "What a horrid family"; James says he and Alan always had a lot in common; Susan sharply forces him to realize the unfairness of that.)

And the fact that James is not, actually, heir to Cauldhurst or Andrew's son: "We may be able to pivot nearly everything on this, but only if we're sure."

One thing I'm feeling the awkwardness of now is the relative lack of Tournier. We've been repeatedly told that he was the only acknowledged match for James's intellect, which seems like a clear positioning of him as a mirror character; but we get so little of his past actions, personality, or characters—really just that one nasty moment with Eleanor in James's recovered memory—that I have trouble seeing him as a character, instead of an abstract oppositional figure. James does say here that Alan's "great gift to the cause" was to render it "practically impossible to tell truth from fiction from pure mythology," which we could analogize to James's hiding himself from his family and the masks he made for them; but it still feels to me more like a symbolism I am dutifully identifying a pleasingly organic parallel.

In Richard's journal, he tells of how the Grey Hound was set on fire that morning while he, James, and Susan were there; Coslick was murdered and Susan was shot, but Mrs. Coslick survived and he believes that they got the children out. James sent him home and he was so shaken that he immediately went, not realizing how much James must have been blaming himself. He wrote from an inn, not having the energy to ride through the night.

Aunt Louisa returns and from something she said, Kit realizes that there were secret rooms in the cellars of Cauldhurst; Clayborough shows her them at her request, and she finds a room with boxes full of muskets and the necessary supplies—and James's pocket-watch—that Clayborough says were loaded in by the man who threatened Kit (not a policeman).

I believe I've had qualms about how Coslick's death was handled in the past, but now I'm looking at this incident and wondering why it's there at all. We already know, from the almost offhand murder of the faux housemaid, how callous and dangerous their opponents are. Did this death serve a purpose beyond horror? I think I'm premature in asking this question, as we know so little at this point about why the incident happened at all. James thinks this wasn't the Trotter's Club because they wouldn't draw blood, but it's not clear to me that applies to anyone who isn't James; it's also not clear to me how accurate a pistol would be from thirty feet away, that is, whether Susan was necessarily the target. But I have one eyebrow up, and the other is poised to join it.

Good job Richard in a crisis, though.

Finally, Kit refers to the secret room as having masks hung on the walls "as from some uncivilized tribe of Negroes from the dark parts of the world," sigh.

I will not be doing this overall day-by-day, as there is too much. However, I do have to say that I thought that the Times article that opens this section was just to show how loathed the Chartists were by those in power, and it was rather long for that purpose; I'm still not sure it isn't rather long for the double purpose of that and the coded tracts.

Anyway, to start with Susan and James, these days are rather an interlude in Manchester.

Political plot: James goes out on two nights to speak with people in Manchester; Susan follows the second night and, when he spots her, accompanies him on the last visit, where he asks George Holland about the rumors of a rising and says he think hard if one is called. Upon receiving Richard's news, Engels concludes

" (...) the Prussians intend to solve their problem with a bit of gold scattered here and there, in order to create some sort of rising among the English working class, or perhaps the Irish, or the Welsh, or all of them. After that, with a few words in the right ears, Parliament can be convinced to pass an act, after which we will all be invited to leave the country, or perhaps allowed to stay if we p-promise not to write or speak to anyone about anything, which I, for one, would find inconvenient."

Susan and James realize that the list of possible informers in his notes are exactly the kind of people who would manufacture such a rising. James and Engels write to various leaders around the country to discredit the informers. (As an aside, James's notes incriminate Bronterre O'Brien as an informer; if that's historical, a fast Google hasn't turned it up.)

On the personal end, James starts the visit "nearly indistinguishable from a well-embalmed corpse" and ends it having accepted that his duty is to his class—which is not the aristocracy, but the working class, by choice—and that his duty requires him to choose to be a leader rather than a soldier.

(I was deeply relieved that the first time he and Engels had a conversation about this, Susan didn't understand what they were talking about either. Also that conversation contains a quote I thought about often during law school: "Hurrah for the Socratic method. Do you ever wonder why none of his students simply hauled off and hit the old bastard? What are we talking about?")

James has a vision and tells Mary about it, which puzzles Susan greatly, both the having and the telling Mary.

And! James and Susan are in love, and lovers. I had remembered how excellently done the sex scene is, but not how good the tension is leading up to it, which as I said before was highlighted by the nature of this reread. I honestly don't know what to say about them that isn't just excessive quotation or gushing, so: I love them, that is all.

Sliding back out in scope a bit, Kitty discovers that David had a son out of wedlock with Eleanor Tournier. Prompted by something Aunt Louisa said, she went to Cauldhurst found a book called La trône terrestre (the earthly throne) about what Johnson had told James about. A policeman ("a tall, dark man of middle years with an enormous moustache," in case we see he again) inadvertently revealed about David's son, and nearly arrested? assaulted? Kitty, before Wye (the butler) retrieved her at gunpoint.

(Engels thinks Eleanor is "enough to make one believe in succubi," which bothers me for some reason I can't pin down.)

Kitty also goes to David's funeral alone; Aunt Louisa, surprisingly, was not there, and Andrew Cobham was. She tried to speak to him to find out where her mother (his second wife) is, because she is very frightened not to have heard from her, but he vanished.

(Devera makes an appearance at the funeral: "a child of eight or nine whom I couldn't even place, but she approached me when no one was looking and pressed my hand in a most adult manner.")

Aunt Louisa wasn't at the funeral because she came to Manchester to find James. Sir George Bankston had written to her saying that Richard was suspected of murder and threatening state security, and in a private meeting, implied that he'd be willing to drop it if she'd give him James. She asks James to help Richard, telling him that they are brothers: she had always known, and wanted to dislike James for it, but could not. James tells her, "You may not be able to protect us both. For once. I'll try to keep you from having to choose." The "for once" is interesting, and I'm not sure what it could refer to.

(Kitty was surprised, at the funeral, that Brian (the solicitor) knew that James was alive, and I was also surprised because I'd assumed that she had told him. But no, it must have been Aunt Louisa, right?)

Aunt Louisa also brings James a letter written by Richard, in which Richard says,

The discovery that we were in fact brothers was not, as my words implied, the reason for my change of attitude, rather it was the catalyst; and this is a thing, my dear brother, that you would know had you read my letter with a clear head, or, rather, had you permitted yourself to know.

Which I think may be putting a little much on James's interpretation skills given that, as Richard admits, his "words implied" that very thing! But they're reconciled and now James feels "Profound and stupid" for fearing what will be taken away in payment for Richard's forgiveness and Susan's love.

In response to Richard's letter, James sends him a copy of ... you guessed it, The Science of Logic, which is why this Tumblr post inevitably reminded me of this book.

Anyway, Richard and Kitty have been strictly told to stay put in order so as not to alert/alarm the opposition, and Susan has written Henry asking for a meeting.

Two more things:

Susan wrote to Kitty explaining how to set up a communication route with Richard, which is another letter we don't have.

And I have more than once quoted Susan saying, "I believe that truth is beauty, but not, I'm afraid, the reverse."

Oh, I'm tired.

Briefly, at least that's the hope:

Cousin Brian the solicitor writes a rather nice threatening letter objecting to the apparent suspicion of Richard for David's murder. I suppose Kit got him on this?

Susan writes to Kit, journal-style. Engels is charismatic; his partner Mary somewhat inevitably fades into the background despite what seems like a genuine effort to avoid it on the part of the authors. Kit's letters all catch up at once, and James takes the revelation about his parentage—and Richard's apology letter—very badly. I'm ashamed that I also did not think of Richard's mother, Louisa, when the revelation first came around. As for James's letter to Richard, I do remember how that shakes out, so I'll just say now that I get where James is coming from.

(I remember what Susan doesn't, about how Diana died. Though I don't know how William died, and my lack of knowledge makes me suspect it is not plot-relevant.)

Richard's journal finally has the payoff for that damn Times article about ship movement: Coslick deliberately shows it to him, and he spots

His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke of Leuchtenberg, with several gentlemen of his suite, visited the Brilliant on the 22nd

He goes and questions someone on the ship who overheard the Grand Duke "swear[ing] he could arrange the provocation, if only the others would promise to submit the bill," and sends that to Kit.

And then he wakes up in the middle of the night, remembering that Lee spoke of Tournier's sister, and realizing she was likely the woman who threatened him last time he was at this inn. He says he already sent the above letter to Kit but would write another note, which is another we don't have. (I never noticed these omissions before so I like noting them now.)

And I don't know if that's all to be said about today, bit it's all I have energy for.

Four entries but they're all short.

Kit writes to Susan to report on Richard's visit to Cauldhurst upon David's death: according to the local constable, David left a note saying that Richard wanted to kill him addressed to "A … uh … person named Tournier," and thus Richard will be "paying a visit to the Continent" to avoid questioning.

(I wonder if the "uh" was because the letter was to Eleanor.)

Kit wonders if either Her Majesty's government or Prussia are financing the Trotter's Club in order to get information on the Chartist movement. And Richard's journal answers that question, it seems: Lee, who runs a coffee-stall and smuggled James out of London, says that the members of the Club "think Leuchtenberg will protect them forever even without seeing results."

Lee very emphatically believes that we are in a fantasy story:

"We know that you have the power, and your wife has more. You will be hard to stop." I said, "I'm worried about James, though."

"Your cousin," said Lee, "is trying to put himself beyond the reach of the Trotter's Club, and in so doing, has put himself beyond our help. But be of good hope. The Old King has never repudiated us, though the Queen knows nothing and will not aid us. But the power remains, and all may yet be very well."

I have no idea who the Old King and the Queen are, or whether they're people at all, for that matter. I also don't remember Richard displaying either anything that could be power or any belief that he has it, unlike Kit.

Anway, Richard is leaving for Portsmouth, specifically for the Grey Hound. He also wrote to Kit and gave a hint about where he was really going, saying that he would "make certain" to "stay somewhere with decent coffee."

Meanwhile, Susan's entry is lovely prose and ominous as heck: "Everything around us is being slowly wiped away, like chalk off a slate. [...] I want to exact a promise from somewhere, that I won't be left to face the end of the world alone, but I can't think where to turn for it."

I knew this was coming, so I'll say no more until we get the details.

Finally! I can stop talking around/spoiler-protecting the fact that James is not Andrew's son, but William's, and therefore is Richard's half-brother! This is revealed in a letter from Diana (Andrew's wife, James's mother) to William dated October 21, 1827, in which she begs for them to be able to flee, as she fears for her life and for James's. As they clearly did not flee, well.

Richard writes to James to apologize for the attack of his last letter, saying that the revelation that they are brothers made him realize how cruel it was of him to reject James after "how circumstances conspired against you, James, leading you into a madrigal of deception, lies, and half-truths to accompany the concerto of violence, torture, and fear that you had fallen into."

Susan's journal entry, which I devoutly wished for last time, and which maybe I shouldn't have, because I should have realized how painful it would be. She rescues James from assailants (thanks to her paragon of a horse, Girasol (tr. Sunflower)); hits him with the news of his pending disinheritance, the assault on Richard, Kit and Richard's marriage, and Roderick's murder by David in rapid succession; and then finishes it off by giving him Richard's (accusatory) letter. He flees into the night, comes back while she's asleep (and writes that letter to Kitty) and is alarmingly docile—and unsure of himself—thereafter.

(RIP the murderous stallion, whose death in the ambush is another crack leading up to the shattering by Richard's letter.)

James doesn't think Johnson is in on the kidnapping, though he still might want to kill him; they're hoping for information out of him, such as what he wrote Betty Howard. So they decide to continue trying to find him, and after that go to Manchester to see Engels, give him the notes (from Susan's memory; Kit deciphered them, Susan memorized and burned them), and see if there's anything else left to do in terms of the informer/the overall danger to them all.