Woodland Ghosts , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Gordon Punter

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205 pages

English

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Does malevolence exist beyond the grave? An extract from the diary of Eleanor Harmsworth, governess at Waldegrave Hall, dated Wednesday 11 October 1899: At first, I was utterly transfixed, but as I summoned the courage to move, so the presence hurriedly glided past me and, similar to a heated knife slicing through a block of cold butter, went straight through the closed door of my bedchamber and disappeared. If ever an event were created to determine the mettle of an individual, then exposing a person to a chilling spectacle such as this would surely test the nerve of any mortal.In this extraordinary novel, author Gordon Punter, delivers a story about courage, risk, change and hope, and a love that never dies.

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	05 septembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785385582
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Woodland Ghosts
The epic story of one woman’s resolve to combat evil to preserve love
Gordon Punter

First published in 2016 by
AG Books
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2016 Gordon Punter
The right of Gordon Punter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
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 written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

To the real Eleanor Harmsworth, my mother, Florence Dear, formerly Punter (1916 - 2015)

For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
The Old Testament

Miss Eleanor Harmsworth
The summer month of August 1933, invariably hot, invariably warm, but never cold. Thirty-one days in which to escape to the coast for a holiday or enjoy a leisurely picnic under the shaded canopy of a weeping willow tree beside a gentle flowing river. A month where woodland birds chirrup, winged insects hum amongst the flowers, and freshly mown grass smells sweet. But whilst some relax, others toil. The harvest season is underway. Beneath a clear blue sky, occasionally dominated by cotton wool clouds, a variety of crops which were sown towards the end of last year, or in the spring of this year, are now being reaped. A sense of joyous optimism, curtailed by the harsh winter months, has resurfaced throughout the farming community and, once again, England is a green and pleasant land.
For certain individuals, however, August is a melancholy month. A month of remembrance. Almost fifteen years before, on the eleventh hour of 11 November 1918, the Great War to end all wars had mercifully ceased. More than half a million British servicemen had been slain during its four slaughterous years. Needlessly, some would say. The majority had died during the Battle of the Somme, which took place in France between 1 July and 18 November 1916. On the first day of the battle alone, nearly twenty thousand soldiers were killed and over twenty-six thousand more were seriously wounded. The magnitude of the catastrophe, the greatest loss of life in British military history, had stunned the entire nation. But much worse was to follow. At the end of the sixteen week battle, the casualty list had risen to four hundred and twenty thousand. Hardly a family in the country had not lost a loved one. Uncles, fathers, husbands, sons, brothers and nephews, sacrificed to a manly folly, had suddenly departed to the hereafter, amidst a maelstrom of German machine gun bullets and artillery shells.
***
Located some three miles from the rural town of Ashdown, in the county of Dorsetshire, and merely a twenty minute walk from the ancestral home of the Waldegrave family, Brocken village is a misnomer. It consists of a church, constructed in the Middle Ages, a rectory opposite the church, which was built in 1862, and nothing else. Pastor to a flock of humble parishioners who predominantly live in the neighbouring village of Bulmer, which does not have its own church, is sixty-eight-year-old Reverend Alistair Croxley. Having left behind the urban poverty and soot of Birmingham City for the clean air of Dorsetshire in 1892, Alistair Croxley has been the parish priest of Brocken village for nigh on forty-three years. His wife, Evelyn, six years younger and a part-time ecclesiologist, who studies church architecture and ornamentation, has spent the better part of four decades excavating and documenting the remains of the eleventh century Benedictine abbey which the rectory had been built upon.
Not one to let the grass grow under her feet, Evelyn has recently turned her attention to the fourteenth century church. Taking advantage of the warm weather, for the interior of the church can be bitterly cold during the winter months, she has begun to transcribe the intriguing assortment of Latin inscriptions engraved on its stonework and that of its two sarcophagus. Outside and behind this place of worship is a moderate, well-maintained churchyard. To its rear, forgotten headstones, tilted to either side, leaning forwards or backwards, resembled askew teeth coated in green mildew. Situated to the forefront of the churchyard, at the end of a gravel pathway, is a marble monument. Having been erected in honour of one particular member of the Waldegrave family, the monument bears the inscription:
Lord Henry James Waldegrave
1858 - 1916
finis vitae sed non amoris, carus
An elderly woman, seated in a wheelchair, faces the monument. Dressed in mourning black, her face masked by a veil attached to a broad-brimmed hat, she coughs hoarsely, indicative of a chest infection. Standing behind her, a forty-five-year-old gentleman, noble in appearance, gently places his hand upon her shoulder, “If you wish, I can remain.”
Her coughing abates.
She pats his hand affectionately, “My wish is that you join your family.” She politely waves him away, “Please, indulge my grandchildren.”
He concedes graciously, “Permit me to return in half an hour, then?”
She nods, murmuring, “Thirty minutes by which to live a lifetime. Yes, I daresay that is time enough.”
Turning about, the gentleman strides along the pathway, leaving the churchyard.
From behind her veil, the woman gazes at the Latin inscription chiselled into the monument, which she grievingly recites to herself, “The end of life, but not of love, dearest.” Comforted by the soft soporific cooing of a distant wood pigeon, she slowly tilts back her head. Closing her eyes, her thoughts gradually return to the past.
***
Wednesday 11 October 1899, and Alexandrina Victoria, now aged eighty, has been Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India, for just over sixty-two years. She reigns over the greatest empire the world has ever known, encompassing an area of 12. 7 million square miles and a population of 444 million. Undisputed master of the seas, the British navy can go where it wants, when it wants. However, since the Crimean War, which had been fought against Tsarist Russia some forty-three years ago, the majority of Britain’s wars, invariably undertaken by the army, have been colonial clashes involving subcontinent nations armed only with a modicum of modern weapons, if any at all. But today, on this second Wednesday of the month, the unthinkable has happened. A Boer republic, governed by whites, has declared war on Great Britain.
Intent on expanding its hold on the rich gold and diamond mines of the dark continent, the British government has long sought to unify the whole of South Africa under its own rule. Last month, after electoral reform discussions with President Kruger of the Transvaal Republic had acrimoniously broken down, military reinforcements had been dispatched to both the Cape and Natal colonies bordering the Transvaal, to persuade Kruger to think again. Supported by President Steyn of the Orange Free State Republic, Kruger had yesterday issued an ultimatum to the British government, calling upon it to remove all imperial troops from its borders or face war. In typical duplicitous tradition, the British government, whilst appearing conciliatory, has ordered sixty-year-old Sir Redvers H. Buller, commander-in-chief of the South African Field Force, to invade and annex the Transvaal. The Boers, descendants of Dutch farmers, have never been averse to fighting imperial troops. Eighteen years earlier, they had successfully rebelled and regained their independence from Great Britain, which they had previously relinquished to the regional power in exchange for military protection against the marauding impis of the Zulu nation. On 4 July 1879, the British army had eliminated that threat to the Boers, decisively defeating the main Zulu impi at the Battle of Ulundi. Now, today, old adversaries, once reluctant collaborators, with contradictory ideologies, are set on a collision course, where each will insanely inflict death, believing one to be right, the other to be wrong, before bowing to the inevitability of peace.
***
However, as far as the hungry eleven-year-old urchin dashing along Praed Street in London in the teeming rain is concerned, the imminent Boer War in South Africa is about as relevant to him as the man in the moon. Turning the corner by a sheltered aromatic chestnut stand, the boy enters Sale Place, a leafy cobblestone street where, above modest shops, coffee houses and restaurants, humble businesses flourish. Avoiding a trotting horse, harnessed to a hansom cab, emerging from a mews, he disappears through an open doorway sandwiched between a patisserie and a gentlemen’s tobacconist.
Bounding up a flight of well-scrubbed wooden stairs to the first-floor and, pausing not for a second, he rushes down a corridor lit only by the leaden daylight filtering through a window at the end. Hurrying past a wall-mounted brass plaque, etched with the words Bolton’s Domestic Agency , he excitedly throws open a door, charges straight into a large one-room office and, panting like an overheated dog, blurts, “I ’ave it ’ere, Mishter Bolton. I ’ave it ’ere.”
Angry at being startled, and by what he considers