A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper

Author:Michelle Cooper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781864715521
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2008-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

28th December, 1936

I AWOKE THIS morning with a plan, of sorts. First, though, I went to the library and found Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. It had been a while since I’d read it. ‘The Holy Grail’ was in the middle, brimming with fantastic visions and mad knights and castles being torn asunder. The Grail, Sir Percivale claimed, had been carried by Joseph of Arimathea from the Holy Land to Glastonbury. I suppose Joseph’s journey could have taken him via the Bay of Biscay and Montmaray, and his ship could have sunk or its cargo been washed overboard. Except Percivale said the Grail had actually reached Glastonbury safely ‘and there awhile it bode’, until it disappeared years later due to the general wicked ness of the population. So Tennyson wasn’t much help.

Then I flipped through Edward de Quincy FitzOsborne’s Collected Works, but it was just as I’d remembered – one brief reference to the Grail that came out of nowhere and disappeared immediately. And one can be certain that if there’d been a shred of evidence that the Grail had come anywhere near Montmaray, Edward de Quincy would have written a hundred pages about it in bad iambic pentameter.

The awful thing was that I could well imagine Simon trying to impress the German Ambassador and making Montmaray seem more important than it actually is. Montmaray is important to us, of course, but not to outsiders – we have no citizens of historical note (Edward de Quincy doesn’t really count), there is no unique wildlife, no highest mountain or biggest waterfall or longest river. All we have is a lot of rocks and shipwrecks, and while some of the shipwrecks probably do contain treasure, anything down there on the sea bed is quite irretrievable. But Simon is a true patriot, no matter what Veronica says, and I must admit he seems ambitious. So why wouldn’t Simon be tempted to embroider a little, to choose to be entertaining rather than strictly accurate in what was, after all, a social gathering, not a conference for history professors. Perhaps the German Ambassador, aware of the Ahnenerbe research, had asked specifically about the Grail; perhaps Simon, wanting to please, had given a response that was not wholly based on the known facts...

I can just imagine what Veronica will say and do if she discovers this. Not that it’s Simon’s fault if the Germans have put two and two together and come up with fifteen, but she is just itching for an excuse to annihilate Simon. All it would require is one of her acerbic letters to Mr Grenville, asking why he permits his clerk to run around in Society impersonating a diplomat, and Simon would lose his job. I can’t allow this to happen. I am going down to explain things to Herr Rahn. Or at least find out what he’s up to.

I have put this down on paper in case I don’t come back.

Signed, Sophia Margaret Elizabeth Jane Clementine FitzOsborne.

I was praying like mad

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