Babel Tower Read Online Free Page B

Babel Tower
Book: Babel Tower Read Online Free
Author: A.S. Byatt
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his wilder enterprises; and an older man, who called himself Turdus Cantor, and was wrapped in a heavy cloak, appearing to find the mountain air, even in the fresh sunlight, chill. Fabian’s brave wife, Mavis, was there, and with them were their three children, newly named Florian, Florizel and Felicitas. More children had set out, two families with their own young and orphaned cousins, but these were not expected to reach the bridge for a few days, since their journey was necessarily slower. Three younger women, clustered together and speaking in low voices, were the raven-haired Mariamne and the palely glimmering twin girls, Coelia and Cynthia. There were also the servants in charge of carts and pack animals—of these, who were appointed to become companions with the rest, once their destination was reached, more will be told at a later date.
    Culvert looked around him, and laughed, and said:
    “So far we have come, through risk and dread, and now we shall enter into the possession of our own lives and our own ways of living. La Tour Bruyarde, where you will be received, had lapsed into disusein my grandfather’s time. Its stones were plundered for the walls of barns and chapels, its halls were empty and the vines were creeping through the broken windows. But much work has been done, many suites and chambers have been restored, the necessary offices are in order, although as you will soon see, the building work will continue above our heads, to make all more secure and harmonious.
    “All of you, I think, know something of my plans in making our retreat here. I wish our new lives to be an experiment in freedom—freedom in large things, in education, in government of our society, in shared labour, in the life of the mind and the life of the passions. Attention will be paid to things that may appear to be lesser things—art, dress, food, the decoration of our living quarters, the cultivation of our plants and trees. These will all be debated amongst us and made new in ways now only partly to be imagined, as we live our passionate and reasonable lives with goodwill. Petty restrictions will be done away with. New combinations will be instituted. Those who desire one thing greatly shall be satisfied, and so shall those who wish to flutter like butterflies from flower to flower.
    “When we and our fellow labourers have crossed this bridge, and when Damian and Samuel have waited here another seven days in hope of the wagon with the children, and other straggling companions, we shall take axes and cut the supports away from the bridge, which will render us unassailable from this direction, from where our danger comes.”
    “Will it,” asked Fabian, “render us also unable to escape from this valley?”
    “We hope no one will ever wish to escape. But also of course no one should be prevented—we are designing a community of entire freedom—and to the south there are narrow passes through the mountains and ways in which, with difficulties no greater than we have just faced, anyone might come out. But I hope we shall all be living in such pleasure, and delight, and mutual usefulness, that such wishes would be far indeed from your thoughts.”
    “Far indeed,” said Roseace, smiling, and spurring on her horse to be the first to set foot on the bridge. So they passed over in safety, some averting their eyes from the giddy chasm below, in which a sullen torrent roared over sharp black basalt, dimmed by stream and spray, forever out of reach of the direct warmth of the sun. Fabian clasped his young son to his breast so that the boy should not look down, but the boy’s sister gazed about her in all directions fearless andlaughing. And so, talking animatedly of the haven they were so soon to see and enter, the company entered the rocky defile which would open on the Valley of Faisans.
    Frederica seems set on coming into the wood, where Hugh is, rather than inviting him over to her side. She hands the boy into Hugh’s hands

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