by Brian John
He was like a small child grappling with an exercise in algebra. So I decided to put him out of his misery. In one of those impulsive moments which have marked my life, I said: “Brynach, you are a man of the world. Would you be offended if I was to remove my dress?”
“Yes -- I mean no. Whatever do you mean? Now I am even more confused....”
“Don’t you worry, Brynach. I am too old for passionate games, and you are perfectly familiar with what I am about to show you. While I take off my dress, will you please light the candles on my dressing table? There are some patent matches in the drawer.”
“Well, if you insist........”
So while he lit the candles I stood in the darkening corner of the room and removed my dress, and then my bodice, blouse and stays. I was not interested in showing him my breasts, for they were less beautiful than they had been in my prime, so I stood with my back to him.
“Bring the light, please, and examine my back.”
He still did not understand the game I was playing, so while I stood there smiling to myself he mumbled some apologies and approached as I had asked. At last he saw the marks on my back -- the scars from the cruel scourging I had received behind the whipping cart in Newport, as a young woman in the year 1797. Those wounds had healed long since, but the marks were still there, quite indelible. They were the only distinguishing marks on my body. The only living people who knew about them were my servants Bessie and Myfanwy and my three children.
At last Brynach whispered: “Mother?”
I turned round to face him, oblivious to the fact that if anybody had entered the door at that stage they would have been truly appalled by the scene before them. Half naked old ladies do not normally stand face to face with well-dressed young men. “Yes, Brynach,” I said. “I am still alive.”
“Can I believe this? But if you are truly my Mother, what of the funeral, the press reports, the inquest, the coffin.........?”
“Full of stones, Brynach.”
“But why? Why?”
“It’s a long story, Brynach, and I will tell it yo you, all in good time. But first I have to prove to you that I am not a ghost. Come and kiss me, and let me embrace you.”
So he did as requested, and I did as I wanted. And we wept, mother and son, locked in an embrace, for a very long time. “There now, Cariad,” I said at last. “You already have two mothers, Elen and Martha, and now you have a third.”
Then I put my clothes back on, and we talked and talked far into the night. When at last Brynach set out for Brithdir Myfanwy and Merlin were in bed, fast asleep. It was three in the morning, and the August full moon was riding high in the sky, with Carningli suffused in a silver glow.
That is really the end of my memoir. Brynach and Lisbet were married a month later in Llandeilo, and I attended as “Aunt Susanna” and as the guest of honour. It was a truly wonderful occasion. The couple then settled on Lisbet’s estate near Llandeilo. With the Plas now back in the possession of the Morgan family, it was appropriate for Wilmot’s son and his family to move out . That was a great relief to them and to the servants. Wilmot was reconciled with his son Joshua and agreed to let him, Jane and the children move to London, where he was given the opportunity to study to be a lawyer in the same chambers as Daisy’s son John. Wilmot , with the proceeds of the Plas Ingli sale, gave the young family an allowance and a house in the city.
And finally, Brynach invited me, old Aunt Susanna, to move back into the Plas. I did that in the spring of 1857. Will retired to an estate cottage, and Gerallt took over as head man. He also got married to his childhood sweetheart Nesta Mather, having previously had inadequate resources and prospects; and his new wife immediately moved into the Plas as my personal maid. Myfanwy also moved back to the Plas, now as housekeeper, and two other servants were also employed.
I moved back into my old room, and was overjoyed to find that all my old furniture had mysteriously returned -- my bed, my chest, my favourite chair, my dressing table and even the writing table in my little dressing-room. In fact, the whole place was furnished just as it was before my reported death. I wondered how this had all been possible, but all people would say was that Rose had organized it.
The ravens are still on the mountain, and so are the skylarks; and the curlews still fly in the dark over the ebbing and flowing waters of the estuary; and the bluebells still bloom in Tycanol Wood. I walk amid the gnarled oaks when I can, but my spirit resides among the rocks rather than among the trees. The mountain is still the place where I walk, and kneel, when my joints allow it, and where I commune with my angels.
Much as I loved Merlin, I was far too old to adopt him and to become a mother again. Indeed, the child had been calling me “Grandma Susanna” since his arrival at Brynglas, as if he knew what was coming. According to the dictates of destiny, when Lisbet met him she immediately fell in love with him, and since she could not bear children of her own, it was inevitable that a ten-year-old freckle-faced boy with extraordinary powers should in due course move to the Llys-gwynt estate near Llandeilo and should take the name of Morgan. Not long ago I decided to tell him the truth about my conspiracy, and the coffin of stones, and my reincarnation as Susanna Ravenhill. I apologized for not telling him earlier. “Why, don’t you worry, Grandma bach,” he said nonchalantly, with a wrinkle on his nose and a sparkle in his eye. “I knew it all the time.”
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Finale
When I had finished reading this Memoir I knew that I had sufficient grounds for hunting for local information about the last days of Susanna Ravenhill. First of all, I checked the local census records for 1861, and found no trace of her. So I started to hunt through the parish records, and very quickly found an entry in the Register of Deaths dated 30th December 1857 for Mrs Elizabeth (Bessie) Walter. Then I found another entry dated 12th May 1859 confirming the death by natural causes of Mrs Susanna Ravenhill, resident at Plas Ingli in the parish of Newport. Out of interest I also looked for a record of the death of Mistress Martha Morgan of Plas Ingli, and found that too, dated 27th February 1855. That death, more apparent than real, was of course also recorded on a plaque in the Morgan family enclosure in Cilgwyn Churchyard.
So Susanna had enjoyed another two and a half years of life after the completion of her memoir. She had reached the age of eighty, and then eighty-one. I was pleased about that, and I knew that as “Aunt Susanna” or “Grandma Susanna” she would have passed her final years with her family around her. I hoped that she had had good health and ample time to enjoy the greatest of all the pleasures of old age, namely the lovely warmth and quietness of a sleeping great-grand-child on her lap..................
To find out how our heroine had died, I had to hunt through the local press, and I found a report eventually, in the pages of The Cambrian. This is what it said:
The Cambrian, Saturday 21st May 1859
A NOTEWORTHY EVENT IN THE NEWPORT DISTRICT
Four years ago, the Cambrian was the first newspaper to report on the earthquake that affected the Carningli and Newport district, and also on a number of singular occurrences which seemed to be connected with the untimely death of a respected local woman, namely Mistress Martha Morgan of Plas Ingli.
Now it has come to our notice that another strange phenomenon has been observed on the mountain on the evening of 12th May. At sunset there was a most vivid display of sunset colours in the far west, but the summit of Carningli was surrounded by a halo of bright light so intense that those who saw it could hardly look at it directly. Those who observed the phenomenon from Newport said that it seemed that the sun was shining on the south side of the summit, and those who observed from the south said that the source of the light was to the north. In any event the summit was silhouetted against the light for some ten minutes. Some claim to have seen an angel standing on the summit for a little while, but our science correspondent informs us that that was probably a result of a sort of hysteria which sometimes affects people who see strange natural phenome
na.
An hour or two prior to the sighting of the strange halo on the summit of Carningli, an elderly lady named Mrs Susanna Ravenhill died while sitting in her favourite chair in the shade of an old white lilac tree, in the garden of Plas Ingli. It was a warm and beautiful early summer evening, and when her body was discovered by servants the lady was holding a bunch of freshly picked wild flowers on her lap. Mrs Ravenhill had on that very day celebrated her 81st birthday with family and friends, and there are no suspicious circumstances.
It is noteworthy that both of these reports of strange natural phenomena on Carningli seem to have been connected with Plas Ingli (the highest house on the mountain) and with the deaths of elderly ladies. Mrs Ravenhill is believed to have been the half-sister of the late Mistress Martha Morgan.
Carningli seems to have gained something of a reputation as a special and even sacred mountain. Three years ago there were a number of sightings of ghostly figures on the mountain, shortly before plans for the establishment of a mighty quarry and metal industry were abandoned. At the time, Mrs Ravenhill is believed to have been involved in the campaign to save the mountain. One of our reporters who lives nearby says that there is still a primitive belief in Cilgwyn that the mountain is protected by spirits, and that somewhere on its slopes there is an entrance to the Otherworld..
Mrs Ravenhill’s funeral was held on 16th May, at Cilgwyn Church, with interment in the adjacent graveyard.
The Cambrian is always first with the local news, and prides itself on its discretion and respect for the truth.
After the discovery of this press cutting, there was only one thing to do. I rushed back to Cilgwyn Church and started to hunt among the headstones, as I had done with Ben Phillips some years ago when we started our hunt for Martha Morgan. This time the searching was easier, since the graveyard had been cleared of brambles following the sale of the church for conversion to a private residence. Down near the bottom wall, close to the stumps of a row of recently-felled yew trees, I found two small slate headstones, side by side. They had been tipped over by the expanding roots of the trees, and now leaned at a precarious angle. I had probably seen them before, more than once, but had previously had no reason to take note of them.
The first one said this:
Here lies the body of
an unknown gentleman
who died on the mountain of Carningli
at least 50 years prior to this date.
Given a Christian burial on this day
15th March 1855
May he rest in peace
And the second one, just a few feet away, said this:
In loving memory of
Susanna Ravenhill
late of London
and then resident of this parish
who saved the mountain
and joined the angels
12th May 1859, aged 81 yrs
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Author's Note
The main scenario of this book, namely the apparent death of the heroine and her subsequent full recovery, may seem to be an unlikely one, but it is by no means impossible. There is even a medical name for it -- the Lazarus Syndrome, named after the man whom Christ is reputed to have raised from the dead. In the medical literature there are many instances of successful resuscitations and even spontaneous “awakenings” of those assumed to be dead, and many learned scientific papers on the subject. A key factor in survival seems to be the cooling down of the body and the gradual slowing of all the vital functions to the point where all signs of life appear to be extinguished. The greatest danger in resuscitation is that once “death” has occurred, permanent brain damage will occur if recovery does not take place within a few minutes.
It should be remembered that the three key indicators of clinical death in the mid nineteenth century were lack of breath, lack of pulse, and lack of eye movements. Examinations of “dead” people were often cursory and unreliable. In Victorian times there was a dread of being buried alive, and patent coffins were even sold which would allow “dead” people to alert the outside world if they suddenly woke up and found that they were six feet under! There were many Gothic horror novels in the Victorian period based on the theme of death and resurrection. The Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive (it really did exist!) encouraged a practice whereby the deceased were left lying in their caskets for days or weeks on end before being deemed sufficiently dead to bury. When the Duke of Wellington died in 1852, this macabre postponement ritual reached an extreme. The Duke was not buried until two months after his death.
In some ways this story is a very introverted one with a straightforward narrative form. I had to write it because Mistress Martha suddenly told me, one day in October 2006 when I was up on the mountain, that she did not die! But in writing down the tale as it came into my head, it gave me the opportunity to explore new themes -- the social impact of industrialization, the separation of town and country, the increasing mobility of the population with the arrival of the railways, and the ability of the new industrialists to use technology on a scale large enough to remove mountains. But most important, I wanted to explore the concepts of identity and personality. What does loss of identity mean? Is it possible for an individual to change personality, to forget the past, and fundamentally to change beliefs and patterns of behaviour? This is a problem faced by informers or spies who are encouraged to “reinvent themselves” for security reasons, or criminals who have served their time and who might be in danger from vigilantes without new names and new locations. What must it have been like for the survivors of Auschwitz to try to leave behind their past, with all its terrors, and to fashion new lives in safety and freedom? And -- a question relevant to this novel -- what would it have been like for Martha, or somebody like her, to change identity and leave behind a life filled with joy and excitement and love, and yet to remain in familiar surroundings with a familiar world of social contacts?
In one of those strange conjunctions, I had already started to write this book when the Carningli Graziers Association and the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park announced a plan to conduct aerial herbicide spraying on the bracken covering the mountain’s lower slopes. Their intentions were no doubt laudable, but immediately there was a cry of “Save the mountain!” and a multi-faceted campaign built up a great momentum in just a few weeks. It was a real grass-roots revolt. Local people felt so strongly about the threatened contamination of this special place that many promised to lie down in the spraying zone beneath the helicopter -- in full view of the TV cameras. A petition with over 1,100 signatures was submitted to the PCNPA, and with the officers responsible being placed under relentless pressure, the proposals were at last abandoned.
At the height of the campaign the mountain suddenly produced two guardian angels in the form of a pair of hen harriers which were believed to have nested -- for the first time ever -- in the proposed spraying zone. Hen harriers are the most heavily protected birds in the UK. If the spraying had gone ahead, the graziers and the officers of the PCNPA would have committed a serious criminal offence, and would have been liable for arrest and prosecution. The threat to the mountain described in the novel was of a different kind and was on a different scale, but “economic necessity” was the justification in both cases, and if anybody wants to see the novel as an allegory that’s fine by me..........
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Acknowledgements
As ever, I thank my wife Inger and my family for their unstinting support and for their unwavering belief that my novels will one day be up there in the best-seller lists! When that day comes, I hope I am alive to enjoy it. Once again Inger has acted as editor, proof-reader and expert consultant on the female psyche. I thank my readers’ panel of Ian Richardson, Irene Payne, Angela John and Robert Anthony for commenting on earlier drafts of the text and for much timely advice. I have to express my gratitude for the wonderful encouragement of a host of readers who have become so immersed in the adventures of Mistress Martha and the fortunes of Plas
Ingli that they probably now know all eight of the tales better than I do. Finally, I acknowledge my great debt to two scholarly works: Revel Guest and Angela V. John, 2007, Lady Charlotte. An Extraordinary Life (Tempus) and Keith Strange, 1980 “In search of the Celestial Empire” Llafur 3(1), pp 44-86. They provided me with much of the raw material for Chapters 7 and 8 of this story.
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The Angel Mountain Saga
Note: Volumes 1-6 run in chronological sequence, covering the life and times of the heroine. Volumes 7 and 8 are out of sequence, and cover events during a long gap in the story, in the middle of “Dark Angel.”
On Angel Mountain, 2001, 978-0-905559-80-0, 328 pp, £6.99
House of Angels, 2002, 978-09-05559-81-9, 432 pp, £7.99
Dark Angel, 2003, 978-0-905559-82-7, 384 pp, £7.99
Rebecca and the Angels, 2004, 978-0-905559-83-5, 432 pp
Flying with Angels, 2005, 978-0-905559-84-5, 328 pp, 328 pp
Guardian Angel, 2007, 978-0-905559-86-5, 256 pp
Sacrifice, 2009, 978-0-905559-90-2, 352 pp
Conspiracy of Angels, 2012, 978-0-905559-93-3, 352 pp
Table of Contents
Dramatis Personae
Prelude: Pickersniff, Jebson and the Woman in Black
THE MANUSCRIPT
1. A Crime Against the Truth
2. Deeper and Deeper
3. The Boy Merlin
4. Loose Ends
5. Tactical Retreat
6. A Tightening Net