The Last Wolf: Part 6

By MICHAEL MORPURGO

I had a sudden idea. It was an old idea, one I'd had in the back of my mind for many years, but had never bothered to do anything much about. This was my opportunity. I had the time, and now I had the means - literally at my fingertips. I would set out on a quest, a quest I could achieve without ever leaving the flat. I could do it all, the whole thing, on the internet, by e-mail. I would search out my roots, piece together my family tree, discover where I came from, who I came from. I would trace my family line back as far as I could go.

On my mother's side, the Meredith side, this proved simple enough because they had lived in this country, in Suffolk mostly, for many generations, and I could track them down through parish records, through registers of births and marriages and deaths. I managed to trace that side of the family all the way back to a Hannah Meredith, who I discovered had been baptized in Southwold on 2 May 1730.

It was like detective work, genealogical detective work, and I was soon completely engrossed in it. I was e-mailing dozens of times a day. I had all the information I had gathered on a database. Miya and I exchanged e-mails often, particularly when I got stuck and needed her help. As Miya had said, her computer was 'brilliant, utterly 'brilliant'.

But my father's family, the McLeod side, the Scottish side, proved much more difficult to trace even with the help of the computer, because they had moved about the world, one of the family to Argentina, one to Australia and another to the United States of America. Only a few generations back the trails kept going cold, and I was beginning to feel very frustrated. I simply had no more clues to follow up, not a single one.

Then, thank goodness, Miya came back home from her holiday and to my rescue. She told me I should upload my whole family tree onto a genealogical website, and appeal for help that way. So that's what I did. For several days I had no response at all. Then one evening Miya logged on for me and found an e-mail from Marianne McLeod of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States.

She had, she wrote, studied my father's side of my family tree with great interest and felt sure we must be distant cousins. She, like me, had been researching her family background - she called it her 'lifelong obsession' - and had traced her family to Scotland, as far back as the 1700s, to her ancestor, and mine, she hoped - one Robbie McLeod of Inverness-shire. Quite by chance she had recently discovered hidden away amongst her family papers, Robbie McLeod's last will and testament. It's the most wonderful story I have ever read. I've scanned it into my computer. Would you like to see it? Would I! I e-mailed back to her at once. Greetings, distant cousin, I can't wait. Miya was as excited as I was now. There was no reply until nearly twenty-four hours later. Miya was there beside me when I first read it. One glance told me that it had been worth waiting for. As I read, my heart in my mouth with excitement, I knew that my quest had been achieved, that with the help of Miya's new-flanged machine,

Miya and I discovered something quite wonderful, as wonderful as any holy grail. I was reading the last words, in his own handwriting, of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

He was speaking to us from across the ages.

Publisher: Random House

Age group: 8-13 yrs


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