Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin

Relics of the Dead: Mistress of the Art of Death 3 is a story about King Arthur, Glastonbury and the west country. The first sentence sets you up beautifully....”And God was angry with His people of Somerset, in the year of Our Lord 1154....”. In Glastonbury two skeletons have been discovered. Could they be the remains of King Arthur and Guinevere? King Henry II summons his Wise Woman (but she has to be careful as heresy and witchcraft are everywhere) to examine the remains and give her assessment. She has to overcome those who want the remains to stay unidentified; there are many who believe that Arthur still lives and will return to lead the Welsh once again to challenge Henry’s rule. 

The descriptive writing is excellent and those who like these historical novels, loosely based on legends and history, will really love it. It also has a very modern twist where the Wise Woman has to make her judgements through a male intermediary as women were not taken seriously. Also, another interesting theme is how the legal system actively changes during the progress of the novel as Henry tries to modernise ways of judgement.

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In Association with the Western Gazette 

You can also read this short story at the Western Gazette website. Click here to follow me and be the first to know when I publish my next article, short story or book review. 

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The Guardians

Have you ever bought an old house? Did you notice the gnarled trees and aged shrubs that were thriving close to its walls?

    No?  

    Then read this.

    There was an old rectory in a remote part of rural Dorset. It was a fine building, very square and solid with large sash windows whose white frames contrasted with the grey colour of the stone. It gave off an aura of permanence as it nestled within the wild growth which hugged the walls. It radiated a feeling of solid strength which lent a timeless support to the transient owners who seemed to change every decade or so. Families came and went with not even the slightest hint of anything unusual. And as long-serving as the house itself, was the family of old Eric, the retired herdsman who had been employed to look after the grounds for as long as anyone in the village could remember, as had his father before him, and his father before him. It was a connection that stretched back into a hazy past and which it was rumoured went back to a celtic, pagan antiquity.

    One day, late in the year 1995 the Atkins family from London arrived as the new owners. Mark had been a successful commodity trader in the City and having made a great deal of money early in his life had decided to retire at the age of 45. He appeared one cold November day with his wife and two girls and was still young enough to want to change his environment; to “improve” whatever he saw.

     “I hear we have an old gardener…I bet he’s so old he won’t want to change anything. I mean just look at all this jungle” he grumbled to Susan, his long suffering wife of twenty years. She shrugged her shoulders as experience had taught her to give way on the small things so that she could win the important disagreements which she knew were sure to come… friends for the girls, schools to choose; the potential battle field stretched before her.

     “I will send for him and tell him what we want” Mark said.

     Susan looked sharply at him. ”We?” She thought to herself, but mentally dismissed the irritation. Susan liked to drift and actually quite enjoyed the general feeling of tumbled-down anarchy which was the garden, but which clearly annoyed Mark. It was as if it were a challenge to his sense of order. She thought surely this couldn’t be important enough to make a stand on.

       It was a raw windy morning when Eric arrived. He could understand how a man from the suburbs of a large city would be repelled by the soggy transition to winter with piles of leaves and plants, lawns and flower beds displaying an autumnal look of unkempt decay.

     “I don’t care about that” Mark pointed out. “I just want to get rid of anything within 30 yards of the house. I need a swimming pool here” he gestured towards some straggly bushes “and maybe a tennis court over there” as he waved his hand at a grove of alder trees.

      Eric froze. “You can’t do that.” He spoke in a very gentle west-country burr while looking at Mark with surprisingly blue eyes. “You must leave these. That is a bay tree. No witch will come near and lightning will strike away from the bay”. He pointed out a large bush about ten feet tall with a tangle of branches which should perhaps be clipped. “And you see that laurel hedge? That will protect against lightning”. Eric talked quietly through the various bushes and plants. There was an unusual oak which had been topped to make it bush, next to it was a massive yew with an old rowan tree gently mingling their branches as if to gather strength from each other. “These are The Guardians; they will protect you” Eric said casting his eyes around the garden with a look of deep and ageless wisdom. And then he spoke quietly about the smaller plants which were spreading over the gravel path that snaked around the house. Patches of clover which pre-dated Christianity; bracken which was running in all directions, and... Mark interrupted him, boredom clearly showing as his original view about Eric was vindicated.

     Mark duly built his swimming pool while the house forlornly took on a naked look. All the trees, plants and anything natural was removed. This ancient elegance had become a depressing building site of mud which was cratered with holes and scars as if the face of a particularly gentle friend had been ravished by the smallpox. Now the house stood alone, in a modern suburban purity.

     “No good will come of this” Eric told his friends of an evening in The Antelope. “This winter will be a hard one; I’ve never seen so many berries in the hedge-rows”. He was right of course. The winter of that year was particularly bad and rampaged through the village within days of the garden’s destruction. The first of the storms tore in from the Atlantic during the night, and bitterly cold  winds drove across the land from the surging wastes of the oceans. The now unprotected house however stood firm even though there were no trees to shield against the wind. The storms produced thunder and lightning of extraordinary energy. The old building groaned and creaked as such houses do. The Atkins family found that the intensity of the violence, the drumming rain, the crashes of thunder with bayonets of lightning darting to earth was truly frightening.

      Nobody in the village knew what happened next. That stormy night the skyline was suddenly lit up by a massive fire which brought a hellish glow to the area. By the time the firetruck had travelled the twenty miles to get there, it was too late. The blaze was so intense as to be out of control. Days later the fine old house was just a heap of ashes, with a charred structure pointing to the sky as if it were a supplicant from a medieval hell.

      No bodies were ever found.

      Eventually, as is the nature of such things, the ground was cleared and a fine looking “Executive Residence” was built. But what is so extraordinary is that there have been several owners, none of whom would stay for more than a few months. They all complained of strange feelings, sudden chills in the atmosphere, even adolescent screams punctuating the stillness of the night. So the house is now, once again, empty.

However Eric is still there talking of the past and of mysteries which have been lost to modern man. But Eric has no son so maybe the pagan link which allowed him to see the future, and which he alone seemed to understand, will one day be broken. Then, there will be no warning.

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In Association with the Western Gazette 

You can also read this short story at the Western Gazette website. Click here to follow me and be the first to know when I publish my next article, short story or book review. 

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Interview with Talk Radio Europe

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A Car-Boot Gem: Henry Longfellow

Spring is a great time for strolling around markets, car boot sales and junk shops. With the warmer weather the need for a quick dash to the local hostelry for a winter warmer is less urgent so last weekend I found myself drifting around the massive car boot sale in Ascot, filled with hope and sunshine.

I came upon a really scrappy old folio with torn and worn corners on its cardboard cover; it was filled with many pages of sheet music which was in itself unremarkable, but hidden amongst all the dross was a page of poetry from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I was ecstatic because it would have been written about 150 years ago and describes many of the moments which I tried to capture in my book Catacombs of the Damned. This is it:

                                                 Haunted Houses.

All houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,

Along the passages they come and go,

Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts

Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, not hear the sounds I hear;

He but perceives what is; while unto me

All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense

Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere

Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense

A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise

By opposite attractions and desires;

The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,

And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar

Of earthly wants and aspirations high,

Come from the influence of an unseen star

An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud

Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,

Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd

Into the realm of mystery and night,....

So from the world of spirits there descends

A bridge of light, connecting it with this,

O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,

Wonder our thoughts above the dark abyss.

            Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

       When discovering something like this, I can never decide whether it is an inspiration for me to write better, or whether it simply tells me the targets are so high as to be unattainable. “From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands and hold in mortmain still their old estates”- just brilliant.

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A Name In Blood by Matt Rees

A Name In Blood by Matt Rees
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an intriguing book which speculates about the life of Caravaggio. Arguably one of the greatest painters of all time, he had a life filled with anger, fear and constant fighting, both physical and verbal. His life was particularly difficult in spite of high-born patronage because he would not compromise his beliefs - slight shades of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead?

Matt Rees’ writing style gets you deeply into the life and loves of Caravaggio and it becomes a compelling story which ends brilliantly with his theory as to how Caravaggio disappeared. It’s the sort of book which benefits from a leisurely second reading so that the progress and style of the book can be more readily appreciated.

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Glamis Castle - the most haunted place in Britain?

Imagine: A land of mountains, rivers and lakes. A wild and lonesome coastline battered since time began by the mighty Atlantic. I am talking of Scotland, a place that the Scottish poet Walter Scott finely describes in Lay of the last Minstrel. 

“O Caledonia! Stern and, wild,

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Meet nurse for a poetic child!  

Land of the mountain and the flood

Land of my Sires! What mortal hand

Can e’er untie the filial band,

That knits me to thy rugged strand!”

Walter Scott

  In the wildness of the Scottish mountains nestle the towers and battlements of Glamis Castle. On a winter’s night when the wind howls and the rain sheets down, there can be no doubt that this is indeed a haunted place with many ghostly stories which have emerged over the centuries. One of the most colourful involves the crypt that transports you back to the middle ages and where behind the stone walls exists a secret chamber. In this chamber one of the first Earls wanted to continue his card game, even though the Sabbath was just minutes away. Cursing and shouting he could find no-one to abuse the Holy Day, until the Devil himself came to play. The Earl, having forfeit his soul, died soon afterwards and the room was bricked up to contain the shouting and swearing which can be heard to this day. But, his foul-mouthed spirit, still in a drunken rage, can be seen walking the ramparts on the darkest nights.

         The castle’s chapel is the home of the “Grey Lady” who was burnt at the stake for witchcraft in 1537. She can now be seen as a tranquil figure kneeling in silent prayer, before melting away.

          The castle, in its long history has been witness to great tragedy and disturbing events. Other legends involve the ghost of a young black servant; an ancient curse brought on the family when they removed a chalice from their former seat; a woman who haunts the grounds; the incarceration of one of the family who was born seriously disfigured and had to be hidden from sight. When you walk around the corridors, staircases and certain rooms you can feel the presence of those who came before. It was Walter Scott who said, after a visit to Glamis, “I began to consider myself as too far from the living, and too near to the dead”.

         It can be no surprise then that Shakespeare based MacBeth at Glamis. Indeed King Duncan was murdered in one of its rooms; although in reality he was murdered elsewhere. But Shakespeare’s evocative writing, filled with witches, apparitions and murder -  “How now you secret, black and midnight hags” - brings a wonderful sense of ghoulish history to what is a very eerie place.

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