‘Now your journalistic instinct comes to the surface,’ laughed Mary. ‘You ask far too many questions. Why do you have this obsession with a woman who has been dead so many centuries?’
‘I don’t think it’s fair to call it an obsession,’ said Gloria.
‘What else is there to call it? Why do you want to know so much about her, child?
‘Because the dreams are about her, about her murder; it’s as though her spirit wants me to reveal the truth, set the record straight.’
‘Set what record straight?’ demanded Mary with sudden dread.
Gloria’s eyes misted over. She rubbed her forehead, as though she had a headache, and then stood upright, proudly erect, glaring at Mary in defiance. When she spoke, it was not Gloria’s voice. ‘I wish to set the record straight about who murdered me!’
‘Isabella?’ mumbled Mary incoherently, stumbling backwards as Gloria’s inhumanly sparkling eyes flashed dangerously. ‘What do you want with my granddaughter? Why do you persist in tormenting her?’
Gloria remained silent, and then the peculiar look in her eyes vanished, and she glanced across at her grandmother. A frown seemed an almost permanent fixture on her face. She spoke in her normal voice, and seemed completely unaware that anything odd had occurred. ‘It’s as though, through me, Isabella is trying to set the record straight about who murdered her.’
‘But why?’ whispered Mary, keeping a firm grip on her walking stick. ‘I mean, she’s been dead for so long, why leave it until now to make the truth known? Few people know of her, and I’m sure nobody particularly cares who killed her.’
‘Maybe I’m her reincarnation? I don’t know. What I do know, though I’m not sure how, is that the answer lies in those books of hers.’
‘I suppose it’s possible they could be of an autobiographical nature,’ ventured Mary cautiously, ‘but I fail to see how they can possibly reveal who her murderer was, since they were written by her before her death.’
‘But,’ said Gloria pointedly, ‘did she write them herself? They weren’t actually published until the 1860s. Someone else might have written them, using her name.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ intoned Mary. ‘I think I read them once, when I was a girl… I’m not sure. My memory is not so good these days. I cannot remember what secrets are contained in the literature. You will have to read them yourself to decide what truths lie within the fiction.’
Gloria stared at her grandmother. It was obvious the old woman knew more than she was prepared to reveal… but what?
As Mary suspected, Gloria had no recollection of being taken over for a few seconds by a voice from the past, but that was only one of the secrets Mary was keeping from her.
The other was something she had known since before she was married.
Something she had read in an unpublished sequel to Isabella Neville’s two novels.
Something that her grandmother had explained to her.
Something she alone now knew, concerning Gloria.
Gloria was certainly no fool. She was far more astute than either her mother was or her great-grandmother had been. Both had read the published works of Isabella Neville, but not the secret manuscript, which Mary and her grandmother had made certain to keep from them. Victoria Trevayne had allowed only Mary to read it, and made her understand exactly why she could tell nobody of its existence, because of its terrifying implications for the future… and the past. If Mary understood the implications of the writings it was a virtual certainty that Gloria would too when she read them. Victoria had told Mary that she would know when the time was right for her to reveal to her own granddaughter the legacy she herself had lived with in silence for most of her life.
During the past decade, Mary had forgotten all about it.
Until now.
It seemed the time had finally come for Gloria to read the manuscript.
Mary had spent the past fifteen minutes searching for the hand-written book, to no avail. She could not remember where it was – probably, she mused, on one of the top shelves, which she could not possibly reach.
‘You’re keeping something from me, aren’t you, Nana Turner?’
The question caught Mary by surprise, and her reaction gave her away, so, never a good liar, she did not attempt to hide the truth. ‘Yes, child, I am, though please don’t ask me what it is. You’ll find out soon enough, have no fear.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mary smiled in her usual mysterious way. ‘It was written in the flames,’ she muttered vaguely. ‘Our destiny has been foretold.’
‘I don’t understand–’
‘Hush now, no more questions,’ Mary sighed, interrupting her. ‘The two novels you are looking for are on that shelf there, I think,’ she added in a gentler tone, pointing to a particular block of shelves. ‘Somewhere.’
Gloria stood, moved to the stack of shelves and sighed deeply. ‘Any idea exactly where these books are, Nana Turner?’
Mary shook her head. ‘That might even be the wrong section. It’s so many years since I’ve looked through all these books; I suppose they could be anywhere really.’
‘Well then, I suppose I ought to start looking.’
‘Forgive me for not assisting you, child, but needs must – old age!’ said Mary, rising to her feet.
‘Sure, Nana Turner, go right ahead,’ smiled Gloria when she realised her grandmother meant she needed the lavatory.
Once Mary had left the room, Gloria turned back to the shelves her grandmother had indicated and almost immediately, on a shelf above eye level, she saw two hardback books, each bearing the name of Isabella Neville proudly on the spine. Using the library ladder to reach the shelf, she pulled down the books, and something else caught her eye on the top shelf of the adjacent unit.
Setting the two books down on the arm of the chair, she moved the ladder and climbed again. Reaching up she retrieved the book she had spotted. It was larger than any ordinary novel, with no printing on the cover or spine, which seemed to be some kind of animal hide, and like everything else in the library, was coated with a thick layer of dust, having clearly lain undisturbed for a great many years.
Intrigued, Gloria opened the cover, to see handwriting that was startlingly familiar. She almost fell off the ladder in shock, but recovered just in time. She scrambled down and settled in the chair, reading the handwritten title page.
THE MASTER OF THE SCROLLS an unfinished tale by Isabella Neville, author of KING OF SAINTS & REALM OF DARK KNIGHTS; discovered and completed by Ria Neville, 1865
It was not so much the fact that she had uncovered an unpublished novel by Isabella Neville that disturbed Gloria; it was the handwriting.
She stared hard at that neatly scribbled writing; there could be no mistaking it – so like her own – and yet she had certainly not written this.
It also perplexed her that there was no mention of the existence of this third novel in any of the historical books she had studied back home.
She tapped the title page thoughtfully. Discovered and completed by Ria Neville, 1865. Ria Neville was someone Gloria knew only a little about, though not what she looked like, and yet still she felt she knew this woman well.
Ria Neville had lived around the same time as Gloria’s great-great-grandmother, Victoria Trevayne, and had been one of the major literary talents of that era, penning around twenty-or-so novels during her lifetime. To Gloria’s knowledge, no pictures existed of Ria Neville. She had remained an enigma throughout her entire career.
Gloria had always admired Ria Neville’s writings, and liked to think she had modelled her own style on that of the great writer, hoping such a thought would not have caused the woman insult if she were still alive. Ria Neville had been Gloria’s favourite author since being ‘forced’ to read one of the magnificent tomes in English Literature classes at school.
Gloria wondered fleetingly whether Ria Neville was a direct descendent of Isabella’s family.
She had taken li
ttle interest in the entries concerning Peter Neville in any of the books she had read relating to the life of Isabella, and now she could not recall whether the man had taken a wife before his premature death, or whether he had fathered any children. It was possible, she thought, but unlikely.
Gloria set aside the handwritten manuscript and turned her attention to the two published works. She opened the one entitled Realm of Dark Knights.
Dedicated to Isabella, with fond respect.
May her soul rest in peace. R.N.
With clear insight Gloria realised, when she read a similar dedication in the other novel, King of Saints, that these two books had been discovered by Ria, who in all probability was a direct descendent of Peter, and published in memory of their murdered author.
The third novel held Gloria in something of a quandary as to why it remained unpublished. Perhaps Ria had died, as Isabella had, before the novel could be finished.
She turned to the end page.
Finis
No, she thought, it is complete.
There were a thousand and one possible reasons for the non-publication of the work, but, Gloria mused sadly, the truth was something she would probably never know. The odd similarities between Ria’s handwriting and her own could also be explained: there were probably dozens of people of the billions inhabiting the world whose writing was identical or similar to her own; it was nothing to get excited about.
As it was such a beautiful day, Gloria decided she had no desire to remain cooped up in the stuffy airless house. She made her way across the open lawns of the purest emerald green at the rear of the house, down the gently sloping hillock to the small ornamental lake, bordered on its farthest shore by the family’s private graveyard, beyond which a copse of trees formed the distant boundary of the estate. On the other side of the copse, the narrow potholed dirt track, which Gloria recalled so vividly from her childhood memories, encircled and ensnared the whole of the Ravenscreag estate.
Close to the nearside edge of the small lake, artificially created at the turn of the century by Gloria’s great-grandfather, there stood a large wooden bench, shaded from the noonday sun by another smaller copse of trees. Gloria could remember when, as a six-year-old wishing freedom from the constant condescending questions of the adults up at the house, she had sat on this bench. It was always peaceful – nobody ever seemed to come down to the lake except her.
As she approached, she thought how small the seat looked now she had grown. As a child, everything had seemed inordinately large to Gloria. The hillock between the house and the lake had seemed like a virtual mountain, but now appeared such a gentle gradient; the lake, once an ocean, now seemed little more than a glorified pond. Gloria smiled as she settled on the north-facing seat, staring past the trees, to where the summit of Creag Meagaidh peeked with decorous gentleness above the tender green tips. Despite the terrifyingly real dreams of murder most foul in ancient times, down here by the lake Gloria felt peaceful and calm.
During both previous visits, she had often felt as though she had been here before, in another time… in another life.
At first she had thought those feelings were merely lingering misty memories remaining from the dream, but now, as she sat on the bench, grown to adulthood; now, as she sat here, staring at the graveyard on the other side of the lake – now, she wasn’t so sure.
It was nothing discernible on which she could place a finger and say, ah yes, I remember. There was just something there, lurking deep within the very roots of her mind, much deeper than reality, much deeper still than the realm of dreams. It was there all the same – the memory of a long ago Scotland.
This place has not changed in over a hundred years, she found herself thinking. The trees are taller, and the lake does not fit in with the memory, but apart from that…
She shook her head violently to rid herself of such idiotic whimsicalities. There was no way she could possibly know how Ravenscreag Hall and the surrounding land had appeared in the Nineteenth Century… unless…
‘Stop this nonsense before you lose your sanity,’ she muttered aloud, aware of the fact that talking to oneself was widely considered to be the first sign of madness anyway – in which case she was already completely and irrevocably mad.
The thought lingered on… unless two spirits possessed her, both battling for supremacy over her mind!
What would happen if they should destroy her mind in the process? Maybe they had already done so. Perhaps that was the very reason for her madness.
Now you are being ridiculous, some inner voice told her as she opened the front cover of King of Saints and began reading.
The more she read of the first novel, the more obvious it became that it was semi-autobiographical in nature. As she became engrossed in the story of the heroine Isobel’s love for the future King Henry viii, all thoughts of possession and spirits and madness vanished from Gloria’s mind. The story and power of the narrative was so gripping and enthralling that she forgot all about the time, and upon finishing the first relatively slim volume, she immediately started reading the second longer book, Realm of Dark Knights, which continued Isobel’s story.
It was only as dusk began to fall that she realised she had been out in the warm shade for most of the day. She glanced at her watch, shocked to see it was gone nine.
She hurried up to the house, grabbing a quick wash and change of clothes before heading back down stairs, where she found Phil and Wilma chatting animatedly in the kitchen.
They glanced up as she appeared. ‘Hi, Gloria,’ Wilma said with a smile. ‘Where have you been keeping yourself today?’
‘I’ve been down by the lake, reading. It was so peaceful down there I lost all track of time!’
‘Mrs Turner sent me out twice to look for you, but I thought you’d gone into the village,’ said Phil, his Scots brogue more pronounced than that of his sister. ‘Nobody goes down to the lake any more. I never thought of looking down there for you.’
Gloria was intrigued about the reason surrounding the lake’s apparent unpopularity, and Wilma informed her it was upon Mrs Turner’s orders. ‘Did you not hear of the ghost when you were a wee bairn?’
Gloria shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied, sitting at the table opposite the siblings. ‘Whose ghost would that be?’
‘Why, the ghost of James Trevayne, of course. He was murdered in the woods that once stood where the lake is now. His daughter, Elizabeth, was furious when her husband defied her wishes and dug up the wood to create the lake.’
‘I never knew that,’ gasped Gloria.
‘It wasn’t something they liked to talk about. Elizabeth Mortimer and her daughter – your grandmother – used to go down to the lake to lay wreaths on the water each year in memory of James Trevayne. The year Wilma and I arrived here I was down there with Mrs Turner, and we both witnessed a ghostly figure on the water, which we believe to be James Trevayne himself, come back to haunt the place where he was murdered. The apparition came towards us but then disappeared. It was really quite spooky!’
‘So Nana Turner forbade you to ever go down to the lake again?’
Phil nodded. ‘She said the spirit was restless. There were too many disturbances or something, so she said nobody was to go there again, and that includes family members, so if she asks where you were all day don’t tell her the truth, because she’d be most upset.’
Gloria shivered uneasily. The thought of more ghostly goings on in her life unnerved her. If she had seen the ghost walking on the water she knew she would probably have screamed so loud, the local people back in Neville Hill would have heard.
‘Nana Turner wasn’t too angry at my absence from dinner, was she?’
‘More worried than angry, I should think,’ replied Phil. ‘When you never showed for dinner as well as lunch she began to fear something terrible had happened to you. Wilma and I managed to convince her you’d just gone for a walk somewhere.’
‘Well, if she asks where I was, I’ll think
of something. I don’t want to upset her. Really, someone might have told me the lake was out of bounds.’
Wilma shrugged. ‘It didn’t cross our minds that you wouldn’t know. I mean, you are family after all.’
‘Never mind, there’s no real harm done.’
Wilma stood. ‘You must be starving. I saved you some food.’
Gloria glanced at her watch. It was now almost ten o’clock, far too late even to contemplate eating. She held up a hand. ‘Thank you, Wilma, but I’m really not all that hungry.’
‘You ought to eat something,’ said Wilma, sounding like a mother, talking down to her as she would to a child. ‘It’s not good for you to eat only a light breakfast and nothing else all day.’
‘Please, I’m really not hungry!’
‘Just a sandwich?’ implored Wilma, who clearly had only Gloria’s state of health on her mind.
Gloria relented, smiling. ‘Okay I’ll have two slices of bread smothered in crunchy peanut butter and raspberry jam.’
Phil and Wilma glanced at one another, wrinkling their noses in disgust. ‘What kind of sandwich is that?’ Phil wanted to know. ‘It sounds revolting.’
‘It’s an American recipe, and despite sounding revolting it’s absolutely delicious. Maybe you should try one?’
Phil held up his hand. ‘No thanks. I shall stick to my boring old cheese and pickle sandwiches if you don’t mind! And I’m afraid we only have the jam, no peanut butter.’
Gloria sighed. ‘Oh well, I guess it will have to do.’
*
Having relented, deciding she was hungry after all, Gloria retired to her room with a plate stacked full of sandwiches and the requisite mug of steaming cocoa. She sat upon the bed and continued reading Isabella’s second novel. She found it disturbing because of the almost incestuous relationship the heroine shared with her cousin.
There were familiar overtones to the story, as well as sinister undercurrents of evil, which stemmed from the introduction of the character Vilam towards the end.
This second novel followed directly on from the end of the first and the manner in which it came to its conclusion implied a third, completing a trilogy – which, upon reading the first few pages of the handwritten The Master of the Scrolls, Gloria decided was definitely the case. She wondered how many people had actually read the longer unpublished novel – certainly nobody in her own lifetime.
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