“Grand,” said Neil feebly. “Original documents. I guess they’re what you want for research.”

* * * * *

From Cousin Abby came the letters from William, Daniel, and Henry Aragon Kingsblood, and Neil fell upon them like a kitten upon a catnip-mouse.

He learned a good deal about the price of wheat in 1852, the voraciousness of pigs in 1876, and the health of a whole gallery of Emmas, Abigails, and Lucys, but all of it was singularly unilluminating about royalty. Even in Henry Aragon’s letters, written in New Jersey between 1826 and 1857, there was only one sentence that might be of guidance:

“These Jerseyites can never seem to decide whether they prefer a Fool or a Scoundrel for Governor, and if I were King of this ignorant Land, I would hang the whole pack of them.”

Neil unhappily concluded that his father’s ancestors were an industrious, sober, and dreary lot, and that if he ever did reach back to the putative son of Catherine, the fellow would probably prove to have become a pious gravedigger. He sighed, “I never did think I’d have much luck at getting to be royal. It was just a chore I promised to do for Dad. I believe I’ll chuck it and think about Biddy and the future, not about Lord High Prince Whoozit. Hell with him.”

But he had been aroused to enough interest in his family to consider now his mother’s line. He hoped that they would be spicier.

He knew little of them, though as a student at the university he had often seen his mother’s mother Julie Saxinar, who was still living. His mother and Gramma Julie had never been harmonious, and for five years now Neil had not seen her, but he remembered her as a spark-eyed, tiny, scoffing old Frenchwoman, whose childhood had been struggled through on the Wisconsin frontier. The next time he saw his mother, late one afternoon, he suggested:

“I’ve been reading about Dad’s family, Mom, but what about yours?”

They were in the “back parlor” of Dr. Kenneth’s lean and aging house, an ill-ventilated room, all brown and dark-gray, jammed with a decrepit roll-top desk and imitation-ebony chairs carved with dragons. Faith Kingsblood was small and flexible, and in her there was a curious stillness. She said little; she seemed always to be waiting for something of which she was apprehensive. Her eyes were bead-black, but her face pale and her lips a faded pink. She trusted Neil and approved of him, and she never gave him advice nor anything more demonstrative than a pat on the arm.

She mused as though she was trying to remember something pleasant but dusty with time.

“I don’t really know much about my folks. My father’s folks, the Saxinars, were about like your father’s: Scotch and English stock, good steady farmers and little businesses. All I know about Mama’s family is, they were French, and I understand that in the old days they were in the fur trade in Canada. But those frontiersmen, I don’t suppose they ever wrote down much about themselves. One time when I asked Mama about them, she just laughed, and she said, ‘Oh, they were a terrible lot of boozy canoemen—nobody for a clean little girl to hear about.’ You know, Mama is a funny woman. I think she always kind of objected to my having so much Saxinar in me, and being so neat and orderly, and clean pinnies. Ain’t that strange!”