Master of the Scrolls

by Benjamin Ford

  Benjamin Ford

  Master of

  the Scrolls

  copyright © Benjamin Ford 2014

  First published 2005

  Revised edition published 2014

  All rights reserved

  Cover illustration copyright by Louis Goss

  Novels by Benjamin Ford

  Portrait of Shade

  The Five Tors

  The Sawyl Gwilym Chronicles:

  Master of the Scrolls

  The Master of Prophecy

  Author’s Note

  Whilst writing the final part of The Sawyl Gwilym Chronicles, I decided to revisit the first book to tighten up the narrative slightly.

  The opening chapters have been revised the most, pruning down those sections dealing with Gloria’s original childhood trips to Ravenscreag Hall and integrating the relevant information into the subsequent pages, thus affording a faster paced opening.

  Throughout the remainder of the novel, minor alterations have also been made to correct grammar and to improve the general flow of the narrative.

  Although the changes do not alter the story in any way, they hopefully make the novel a better read.

  The third volume, The Master of Time, is still very much a work in progress. Sadly, sometimes real life gets in the way of the writing process, but rest assured, the final part of The Sawyl Gwilym Chronicles will eventually see the light of day.

  Benjamin Ford,

  West Sussex, February 2014

  T he Dream

  The room is in complete darkness until the moon reappears from behind the dense bank of night-time cloud, illuminating a large ornately carved bed, a desk covered with scattered papers, and various items of clothing strewn across the floor.

  Nothing stirs within the room; not a breath of air whispers through the open window: silence reigns.

  Dark and silence go together hand in hand with peace and solitude, not out of place in the middle of a summer’s night.

  Breathing, light and sylph-like approaches the door to one side of the desk, opposite the window. In the shadows of the room, the watcher waits, powerless to move, unable to speak.

  The door opens; there is a light feminine footfall, a swish and rustling of long skirts. The watcher waits as a shadowy figure enters, carrying a candle.

  Golden illumination echoes noiselessly around the room, casting eerie shadows as the flame flickers, and still the watcher waits, breath held, invisible to the woman, not really there; an observer, nothing more.

  The woman is short, not quite slender, yet perfectly proportioned and beautiful, her hair as black as the night. She moves with grace and elegant poise to close the door, but suddenly backs away. A moan of terror issues forth from her small rosebud lips.

  The watcher continues to wait, straining against invisible bonds to witness what is happening, to see what has so frightened the woman.

  Melting away from the shadows beyond the room, a sinister figure dressed from head to foot in black appears; a cowl obscures the face, hidden amid more shadows. There is stubble visible, but all other features are indiscernible.

  From beneath the folds of the cloak, a hand appears; dirty fingers, nails grotesquely bitten to the quick, clutch a wicked looking knife so tightly that the knuckles shine white in the soft pallid moonlight.

  A cloud moves to obscure the moon once more, but the knife gleams in the candlelight, more than just threatening.

  Unobserved, the watcher is still waiting, breath held, eyes riveted upon the intruder as the woman continues to back away.

  The sudden draught caused by the lunging intruder extinguishes the candle.

  The dagger finds its mark; blood flows. There is a scream, receding to a moan, then a few seconds of silence, and the moon again casts its silvery light.

  The woman’s bloodied body lies on the floor, the knife gone, along with the killer.

  The watcher has never seen a dead body before.

  In silence, the watcher screams.

  And the screaming continues, for there is nobody near to hear.

  Part One

  A Nightmare of Dreams

  June 1987

  Today, thought Gloria Schofield, I am thirty!

  She peered into the mirror of her bathroom cabinet, pleased that there were no visible signs of ageing, not even a single grey hair – but it was only a matter of time. Growing old did not appeal to her, but then did anyone look forward to what nature had in store? The inevitable was unavoidable. HRT might help, as could plastic surgery: breast implants to forestall the sagging, a facelift or three to minimise the wrinkles. It was all so pointless. It served only to prolong the agony and made the waiting for the inevitable even longer.

  Time always caught up eventually.

  She brushed her long raven tresses, disentangling the mass of curls, wondering whether perhaps she had chosen the wrong type of perm. It would grow out, she reasoned, scrutinising her reflection critically, carefully, deciding she did like her new hairstyle. A radical difference always took a little getting used to, and this was all part of the new image her publisher had suggested to promote her latest novel. She had to admit that in the jacket photograph, dressed in the appropriate style to compliment her historical romance, the striking look was certainly effective, evoking the era of the novel perfectly.

  The hairstyle alone made her look twenty. Who needed plastic surgery if they had Mario for their stylist?

  Leaving the bathroom, she dressed in faded denims and an oversize tee shirt of a tasteless shade of purple, and made her way to the kitchen, collecting the morning mail as it dropped through the letterbox.

  Bills, bills, and more bills – she sighed; A letter from her agent – she smiled; A dozen plain envelopes, the top one hand addressed in Louise Barncroft’s appalling scrawl – she grinned cheerily, trying to decipher the post mark to determine which country her intrepid explorer friend had now reached in her seemingly endless round-the-world trip.

  At times, Gloria envied Louise. Their childhood friend-ship had not waned over the years. Having both left university after a three-year course in journalism, Gloria had procured a job at one of the tabloids, whilst Louise had gone on to write a lifestyle section in a popular women’s magazine. She had her finger on the pulse of women’s interests and quickly progressed to features editor, improving the magazine considerably with her radical flair and zest.

  The job eventually lost its sparkle and last year Louise had quit, whereupon she embarked on what was intended to be a two-year trip, travelling the world. Being Louise, of course, it was not to be a purely relaxing holiday – far from it. When she returned to England in about nine months time, Louise intended to write several definitive guidebooks of the world; books full of detail, packed with photographs.

  Sitting on a stool beside the breakfast bar, Gloria read Louise’s letter, enclosed within the birthday card, laughing at her friend’s anecdotal commentary. When she finished, she replaced the letter in the envelope, stood the card up on the bar, and ignoring the bills completely, opened the rest of her personal mail. They were all birthday cards from relatives and friends. The last one she opened was from her grandmother.

  Nana Turner had written in the card: When are you going to visit your old Grandmother?

  I shall have to call her and apologise, thought Gloria.

  Mary Turner disliked speaking on her recently installed telephone, especially to strangers, an intense dislike Gloria had inherited to a degree.

  She resolved that she would call her grandmother to explain her reasons for failing to visit Ravenscreag Hall when, on numerous occasions during the past fourteen years she had promised she would, each time breaking the promise with a plausible but untruthful reason.r />
  They were just excuses, not real reasons.

  The main reason for her reluctance to revisit the ancestral family home in Scotland stemmed from her previous couple of visits.

  Ravenscreag Hall had once been the focal point of the village, if village was what one could call a score or so houses, one shop and one church. Sandwiched between Moy and Cromra, Loch Laggan lay to the south, while Beinn A’ Chaorainn and Creag Meagaidh, two imposing mountains each in excess of three thousand feet, dominated the northern skyline, with countless more hills and mountains and forests all around.

  It was very picturesque, if rather desolate, and hardly the most hospitable place in the country. When it snowed the roads into the tiny village were impassable, leaving the inhabitants isolated from the outside world for days, often weeks.

  At the time of her first visit, Gloria had been a child of six, wide eyed with excitement and innocence at the prospect of seeing her oft-mentioned grandmother for the first time.

  Having seen photographs of the impressive house, Gloria’s young mind could not comprehend why her parents avoided Ravenscreag Hall.

  After that first visit, however, she began to understand all too clearly.

  The trip had started well enough, even though her parents argued constantly about the route into the village from the main road, and when they finally arrived, Gloria saw the house for the first time.

  Ravenscreag Hall was an eye-catching house; an immense building constructed mostly of local stone and slate. Dating mainly back to the early Nineteenth Century, it had been rebuilt using the surviving stone from the original Sixteenth Century building.

  Its gothic tower attached to the west wing was where Gloria had wanted to sleep, and against her mother’s better judgment, the six year old girl was granted her wish.

  That night the dream came to her, awakening her with a scream that continued endlessly, for there was no one near to hear. Each subsequent night the dream returned, keeping her awake in the cold, stone room for hours until fatigue snatched her into its embrace.

  Ten years later the family made another journey to Ravenscreag, this time accompanied by Louise. Gloria had told her school-friend all about the unwelcoming house, even shown her photos, and nothing could dissuade the teenager from travelling up to see it first hand.

  The driveway, which led through dense, confining trees, was in worse condition than before. Twisting and turning its dusty potholed way constantly among the trees, through which precious little daylight managed to penetrate, they eventually emerged, and there, directly ahead, loomed the behemoth itself.

  It had changed little.

  Tall…

  Dark…

  Imposing…

  Menacing…

  Grotesque…

  Beautiful…

  The car had pulled up parallel to the massive arched oak door, adorned with iron studs and bolts, and standing just outside the door, Mary Turner leant her frail, eighty-three year old body heavily on her walking stick. She was not as feeble as she might have appeared to an outsider however, a fact of which even Gloria was very aware. Still, after ten years she was no longer quite so certain of that fact, although she was still more than a little convinced that the old woman would outlive them all.

  Although Mary Turner had liked Louise on sight, she rasped her disapproval of the teenager’s lacquered beehive. Louise had been glad when Gloria dragged her off to explore the many rooms, except for Mary’s suite on the second floor, which was forbidden to everyone including Rachel, Gloria’s mother.

  That night the dream came once more, for the first time since the previous visit. It seemed more powerful than before. Gloria’s screaming awakened Louise, who was clearly terrified, but as with the first visit, no one else in the house seemed able to hear her. Though the pair had agreed not to trouble anyone about it, Gloria mentioned it to her grandmother.

  Think subconsciously of all the people you love; love will vanquish evil. Think of all that you wish to accomplish in your life; faith conquers fear. These thoughts should help dispel your nightmares.

  That was what Nana Turner had advised Gloria, and for the subsequent five nights the advice worked, even though the memory of the dream lingered. The connection between the nightmare and the house, however, was clear, and Gloria had not revisited the house since then, too afraid to contemplate such a trip, even though she was at an age when dreams, however bad and nightmarish they might be, should not control her life.

  Each year Mary wrote to Gloria on her birthday, asking when she would next visit. Each year Gloria responded in a hastily composed letter, saying that she would try to visit sometime during the following year – which, of course, she never did. Gloria always had a ready excuse not to accompany her parents on what had become a semi-annual pilgrimage to Ravenscreag Hall.

  The lies had spiralled out of control, which was why she had decided finally to tell her grandmother why she kept avoiding Ravenscreag Hall, though she somehow suspected Nana Turner already knew the truth.

  Gloria’s parents were currently visiting Ravenscreag, and since it was her birthday, she decided it would also be nice to speak to them. Reaching for the telephone, she peered at the pin board beside it, on which she had fastened essential telephone numbers, and pressed the digits of her grandmother’s number.

  A calm disembodied voice informed her there was a fault on the line, inviting her to try again later.

  Replacing the receiver firmly, Gloria cursed. She knew exactly what that meant. The telephone lines to Ravenscreag were notorious – there was probably no point in trying the number again for at least forty-eight hours.

  Knowing she would probably not try again, but promising she would try not to be a coward, Gloria continued opening her mail. The letter from her agent was an invitation to attend a grand gala literary luncheon at a top London hotel. Also included were a couple of clippings from the national press regarding the wildly exaggerated reports concerning the amount of money an American publishing house had paid for the rights to her fourth and fifth novels, the latter of which had yet to be written. There were several reviews of her latest published tome, which had been on sale for three weeks and was comfortably nestling at the top of the bestseller list in England, where it had already outsold her previous three novels. Finally, there were also a couple of invitations to appear on television chat shows, whose hosts were desperate to interview her.

  At the bottom of the letter from her agent, who was also a very good friend, was a desperate plea for delivery of the completed fifth manuscript to arrive by her editor’s deadline.

  ‘You’ll be lucky, Isolde,’ chuckled Gloria softly without humour. She had informed her agent that she was halfway through the new book, when in fact she had not yet even started it. She did not even have a plot, and since it took Gloria at least a year, sometimes eighteen months, to research and write each novel, there was no way she could complete and deliver a manuscript she had not even begun by the end of the year.

  Gloria’s method of writing her novels was laborious and longwinded. Having first developed the rough outline for her plot, she would thoroughly research the period in which her historical romance was to be set, which she would integrate into a more thorough plot outline. Then she wrote in longhand, on A4 pads, for however long it took to complete the first draft. She was a perfectionist, so often scores of handwritten pages would find their way into her always-overflowing wastebasket.

  Following this she would take a week to rest and relax before starting on the slow process of typing the novel out, making alterations to the structure, but never the plot, after which she would proofread the typescript, revising as she went, and when it was perfect, then – and only then – would Isolde be allowed to see it.

  It was this sense of methodical dedication which made her novels so popular, because they were exciting, authentic in detail – except where she chose to use artistic licence to make the book read more fluidly – and well written, while still being an
easy read.

  It was also this sense of methodical dedication that caused Gloria to miss virtually every deadline set by her editor, Victor Carter.

  Isolde Bainbridge was painfully patient. Gloria Schofield was the biggest selling author on her steadily growing list of clients. Paperback editions of the first three novels had each sold in excess of half a million copies in England alone. Isolde might always beg for prompt delivery of the next new manuscript, but she never complained when each was late because Victor never complained – not even when Gloria delivered her last manuscript almost nine months late.

  Gloria knew her poor agent must frequently be tearing out her hair in frustration, but the wait was always worth it.

  Gloria decided to pay Isolde a visit at the end of the week since she had to travel up to London to see her parents anyway, once they had returned from their trip to Scotland.

  *

  Later that morning, Gloria took her morning constitutional from her house on the outskirts of Neville Hill, across the narrow stone bridge that traversed what was apparently a long dried up stream and down the lane into the heart of the village itself. Upon returning, she retired to her study on the ground floor and stared at the blank sheet of paper that lay on the oak desk before her, desperate for inspiration.

  Unable to think of anything, she stood dejectedly. She always had this trouble. Obtaining the germ of an idea to turn into a plot for a novel was, for her, the most difficult part. Once she had her plot, the actual writing was easy, though not always without a degree of writer’s block. When that happened, she put on the kettle, went for a relaxing walk across the meadows of the Sussex Downs surrounding Neville Hill, or through the ominously named Dead Man’s Wood to the west of the village. Then she returned home to make herself an equally nice mug of refreshing coffee, settled in front of her pad, and continued writing as if the blockage of ideas had not occurred.