Who Dies Beneath

by L. J. Hutton

  However, forests and any form of wild countryside were also ripe for plucking as a setting in the medieval period, where you could experiment with stories and devices which would otherwise be frowned upon – particularly by the Church. Courts, towns, and cultivated fields were all under the watchful eye of the religious, and therefore if you wanted to approach subject matter which would be disapproved of, it was necessary to find a setting where that observance wouldn’t take place. Classical themes were also socially acceptable as means of discussing the morally or spiritually grey areas, because having existed pre-Christianity, the people could not have been bounds by its strictures. Therefore the Classical tale of Sir Orfeo slid into the medieval lai, moving its location to an England which had never existed in Classical times, and condensing all sorts of elements along the way, such as the Alfredian capital of Winchester now having a whole extra past.

  So I thought, ‘Where did those elves go to and what would they be like today?’ The elves in Sir Orfeo are definitely ‘the lordly ones’, not pretty fairies! They present a significant danger to the characters, and while they can bestow great favours, they are certainly not beings who you would want to cross. They ride out hawking and hunting, just as a human lordly court would, and in that sense they are very much as Tolkien would portray them much later on. Therefore that is how my elves have appeared, because even the female elves were powerful and not to be trifled with.

  As I mentioned in the first Bill Scathlock story, it’s not that I have a grudge against Walsall or the people who live there. Sadly government statistics show that it’s an area particularly favoured by the low-lifes who traffic people, and sex workers in particular. And likewise, the two significant areas where those unfortunate workers tend to come from are either Uganda, or the cluster of former Soviet Bloc countries that line the Baltic. You might think that women vanishing could not happen in this day and age, but via personal contacts, I have heard of terribly sad cases where young girls have vanished from inner city communities, and where nobody will speak up about it. Some of them get sent back to their parents’ country of origin to be married, but others think they are escaping only to find themselves in the hands of exploiters – I wish I had only made that up, but I didn’t.

  The railway which runs from the Shropshire county town of Shrewsbury to Swansea on the South Wales coast, does (as of the time of writing) still run five trains a day through the glorious countryside of the Radnor Forest and beyond. The unlikely named Knucklas Viaduct is real and one of many glorious feats of Victorian engineering. That whole area of countryside is very different to the image of neat tended fields that most people think of as typically English, and it is cut by fast-flowing rivers which run down into the River Severn and then out to sea. Some of the communities along the Welsh border are very isolated, and so while Thomas Mulligrew isn’t based on anybody in particular, his out of the way farm is not unknown along that Shropshire-Herefordshire border with Wales. The mountains might be softer and less rugged than mountains in other parts of the world, but there’s a reason why the SAS train over the Brecon Beacons, and they along with the Shropshire Hills to the north of them, have caught out many an unwary walker when the mists descend. It’s a very quiet part of England, and at times quite eerie, so if ever there was somewhere where elves would still roam unnoticed, this might well be it!

  And I should add a brief word on cider and perry. In some parts of the world, cider is little more than ordinary apple juice, but in the UK there are three areas which are renowned for their cider-making – Kent, the West Country (Somerset and Devon in particular), and the area in this book. Often brewed in small batches on farms, local ciders can deliver a mighty kick! Some of them come close to wine in strength, and yet can be deceptively drinkable in pints – you have been warned! It is also common for some varieties of crab-apple to be used in ciders for the reasons I’ve given in the book. You wouldn’t want to eat crab-apples, but they do make excellent cider, and also a jelly which is excellent as a relish with savouries – they even have enough pectin in to be useful in small quantities to help other jams and jellies set.

  Perry is the proper name for pear cider, and because it hasn’t had the popularity of cider, you don’t tend to find as many big producers making ‘sanitised’ versions for mass consumption. Again, perries can be dangerously strong, and are made from pears which notoriously are too hard and too sour for even pigs to eat. There is a variety called the Worcester Black Pear, which appears on the city coat of arms, and there are several specimens planted in the city parks and open spaces. When their fruit swell and ripen, it’s not unknown to find discarded pears with one bite taken out of them, when the unwary have thought they were picking a dessert variety only to find something far less palatable. It’s therefore rare to find a sweet perry in the way that you get sweet ciders, but if you like a dry wine or cider, do give perry a try if you come across it, particularly at local beer festivals or country shows, when you’re likely to discover the best of small local producers.

  And lastly, an apology to any police who find issue with Bill’s actions. This is, after all, a work of fiction – I can’t imagine any West Mercian officers have come across elves lately – and so I needed Bill to fit with the story. I would be the first to confess that I don’t know nearly enough about police procedures to be able to go into them in any depth, and therefore I have carefully tried to skirt around them.

  About the Author

  L. J. HUTTON LIVES in Worcestershire and writes history, mystery and fantasy novels. If you would like to know more about any of these books you are very welcome to come and visit my online home at www.ljhutton.com

  Alternatively, you can connect with me at Facebook

  ALSO BY L. J. HUTTON:

  Green Lord’s Guardian – the second Bill Scathlock novel, immediately preceding this one.

  A Finnish boy in Britain who isn’t what he seems, an attempted abduction by Russian thugs, and an off-duty detective who takes on more than he expected!

  When DI Bill Scathlock foils the abduction of Finnish schoolboy Tapio, things soon take an unexpected turn. What is Tapio’s secret, who or what is hunting him, and why? The links back to Finland, its mythology, and his au pair’s family, weave an ever more tangled web, and as the violence escalates Bill needs a wholly different kind of back-up than his colleagues normally provide. More than a boy’s life is at stake as Bill fights to guard him against evil.

  THE RUNE HOUSE – where Sylvia and Carol have their encounter with the strange.

  A detective haunted by a past case, a house with a sinister secret, and a missing little girl! Can DI Ric Drake rescue her and find redemption along the way?

  When DS Merlin ‘Robbie’ Roberts hears he’s got a new colleague it’s the last thing he wants, and especially when it’s Ric Drake – infamous, recovering from a heart attack and refusing retirement. But when a modern missing child case links to one from Ric’s past, and to a mysterious old house on the Welsh borders, they find a common cause. Do the ancient bodies discovered under a modern one hold the clue to both girls’ fate, and does the house itself hold the key? As the links to the past keep getting stronger, Robbie and Drake must find a way to break the strange link before more children fall prey to Weord Manor’s ancient lure.

  DON’T DELVE TOO DEEP – a story where the elves of another clan appear.

  Stella’s friend Dav is missing in the Welsh mountains, and her ex- could be lying about it. Can she find Dav in time to save his life?

  Stella knows her ex, Toby, perennial lies through his teeth, so what’s new? But she soon realises that something went horribly wrong on the simple army exercise that left him and his mates hospitalised, wounded in mind and body. Along with the fathers of two of Toby’s wounded comrades, she begins unravelling the web of lies surrounding the exercise, which even the army seems confused about – not just for the sake of Toby and the lads in hospital, but also because her and Toby’s oldest friend, Dav, is missing and
nobody seems to know how, when, or where!

  Who are the officers who keep trying to cover things up, and did their superiors even know what was going on? As additional casualty numbers start rising, Stella and her new allies soon find themselves dealing with mysterious goings on far beyond anything they could have anticipated. Yet there’s also the chance of a fresh start for Stella and her ally, Bob, as the trail leads them into the mysterious Welsh mountains, and together they find a disused mine that holds a very strange secret in its depths.

  Published by Wylfheort Books

  Copyright 2021 L. J. Hutton

  Copyright

  THE MORAL RIGHT OF L. J. Hutton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.

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