The story so far… Reggie Upton, having endured the perpetual fog of Hopeless, Maine, for over a year, one day decided that he desperately needed to see some sunshine.  With the aid of a surprisingly accommodating Durosimi O’Stoat, he and Philomena Bucket ventured through the Underland to Doctor John Dee’s study in Mortlake, then out into the heart of Elizabethan London. To their dismay, the skies over the smoky city were little clearer than those of Hopeless. Adding to their discomfort, the air was foul and the gutters ran with filth.

Before the two were able to make their way back to the Underland, Reggie was mistaken for a distant ancestor, Sir Walter Upton. It appeared that Sir Walter was a notorious heretic, wanted by the authorities for sheltering priests, a crime punishable by an unpleasantly fiery death. While it had been fortunate that the person accosting Reggie was one of Sir Walter’s fellow conspirators, in the haste to get him off the street, he and Philomena had become separated.

If Philomena was surprised to see the ghost of Granny Bucket flickering in the shadows, she didn’t allow herself to show it.

“I don’t suppose you have any idea what I’m supposed to do now, by any chance?” asked Philomena.

“You know me,” said Granny, breezily. “I’m full of good ideas. Here’s one; why don’t you just go back the way you came?”

“Back to Mortlake, and leave Reggie to his fate? I’m not going to do that!”

“Well, if you insist on making your life difficult, be my guest,” sighed Granny, then paused. “Oh, I suppose that you had better come with me,” she added, huffily.

Philomena smiled inwardly. This was typical of one of Granny’s games. She had obviously followed them, and was quite aware that her granddaughter would never leave her friend high and dry.

Without another word the ghost weaved her way through the crowd, passing through people and obstacles as if they did not exist, but always staying within Philomena’s line of vision. Only two citizens in that heaving throng appeared to even notice that Granny was there.

“They must have ‘the sight’,“ thought Philomena. “That’s a dangerous gift to possess in these times.”

A dangerous gift indeed, but had she known it, at that moment Philomena was being led into the very core of danger.

While Philomena was busily pursuing the ghost of Granny Bucket through a maze of city streets, Reggie Upton’s would-be rescuer had garnered the aid of two accomplices. Protesting to deaf ears, Reggie found himself being roughly bundled into a mule-cart and covered with a pile of empty sacks which, in the very recent past, had been used for the transportation of some anonymous, but less than fragrant cargo.

“Don’t you worry, Sir Walter,” said the somewhat less-than-confident voice of someone obviously crossing their fingers. “We’ll get you out of here soon enough.”

Reggie found little comfort in this. The only place where he wanted to be at that moment was back in the safety of The Squid and Teapot.

Philomena had walked for miles and was not at all happy that Granny Bucket had decided to disappear without a word of explanation. Looking about her, the awful realisation dawned that she was back in Mortlake, not far from Doctor Dee’s house. For the first time in her life she felt betrayed by her grandmother. Her dear friend Reggie was stranded somewhere in Elizabethan London, and Granny had deserted him totally. Philomena felt wretched.

She was suddenly startled by the sound of heavy bolts being drawn back. It was only upon turning to discover the source of the noise that she realised that she was standing in front of the grandest house in Mortlake –  at least, it had been grand at one time; now she sensed sad neglect oozing out of every brick. A door opened in what might once have been the porter’s lodge, revealing the slender form of a girl, barely into her teens.

“Are you Mistress Bucket?”

Philomena swallowed hard. This was bizarre.

“I suppose I am,” she said warily. “Who is asking?”

The girl said nothing, but beckoned her to follow.

The two made their way through a gateway that showed all the signs of having once sported a portcullis, then through an open courtyard and into the body of the house. Philomena did not know whether to feel comforted or threatened that there seemed to be no one in this huge, decaying building but her and the girl.

They climbed a flight of stairs which brought them to a gallery. Half way along its length the girl stopped, wordlessly pushed open a heavy door, and ushered Philomena into a room where every wall, from floor to ceiling, was lined with books.

“Welcome to my library, Mistress Bucket.”

Philomena turned abruptly at the sound of the man’s voice.

He was a finely dressed, typical Elizabethan gentleman, casually sitting in the corner and eating an apple, which he sliced with a silver knife.

“You must be Mistress Bucket, I assume?”

Philomena looked nervously at the knife, and nodded.

As if on a predetermined cue the girl quietly left the room, closing the library door behind her.

“Excellent,” said the stranger, laying the apple – but not the knife – upon a small side-table.

“Welcome to Mortlake Manor – or what is left of it.”

Then, to Philomena’s surprise, he began to pull the books from one the shelves, until the whole of the panelled wall behind it was exposed.

“You realise that you have now gone beyond the point of no return?” he said, fingering the blade, which suddenly looked worryingly lethal.

Philomena had no idea what he meant by this, but nodded in agreement. She had no wish to upset her host.

It was then that the strangest thing happened. One of the wall panels flipped up, and the familiar face of Reggie Upton poked through the gap.

“My dear Philomena,“ he beamed, “what an absolute pleasure to see you at last. You have met Father Anthony, I see.”

“Father Anthony?” she said, regarding the knife-wielding dandy standing in front of her.

“I can hardly wear my priestly garments, can I?” explained Father Anthony. “Any hint of popery is a death-warrant these days.”

He paused, then added, “And yes, I would have killed you if necessary. Mortlake Manor is too valuable a resource to lose to betrayal.”

“How did you know I would be there?” asked Philomena, as she and Reggie made their way along the road to Doctor Dee’s study and the Underland.

“It was Granny Bucket. ” said Reggie. “She followed the mule-cart which took me to Mortlake Manor. That priests-hole in which they hid me was cramped, I can tell you!”

“Oh, that woman!” fumed Philomena. “Why couldn’t she just have told me where you were?”

“That’s ancestors for you,” said Reggie. “Mine are as bad. If it hadn’t been for dear old Sir Walter Upton, that might have been a fairly tolerable excursion.”

“We’ll give Tudor England a wide berth in future,” said Philomena. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Reggie. “I can’t wait to get back to The Squid and have a stiff drink.”

Author”s note:

Mortlake Manor started life as one of the palaces of the Archbishops of Canterbury, pre-dating the Norman Conquest of 1066, and was visited over the following five hundred years by a multitude of English kings. In 1536 Henry V111  gifted the manor to his first minister, Sir Thomas Cromwell, who had been newly elevated to the peerage as 1st Baron Cromwell of Wimbledon, as a reward for his part in the downfall of Anne Boleyn. Cromwell wasted no time in subjecting the manor to an enormous building programme. By 1540, however, he had fallen out of favour and had his come-uppance when Henry had him executed for treason.

At the time of our tale, Mortlake Manor was in a dismal state of disrepair, with bits of it being spirited away to build and furnish other residences. By the early years of the eighteenth century the building had been pulled down completely.

 Brigadier Reginald Fitzhugh Hawkesbury-Upton had always prided himself on being fazed by nothing. Even finding that he had been deposited upon the island of Hopeless, Maine, when his intention had been to board the RMS Titanic, was something that he had taken in his stride. So ready was he to embrace his new life that he had insisted on being known simply as Reggie Upton, and had thrown himself completely into what passed as Hopeless society. One or two of his friends noticed, however, that, in recent weeks, his stoic approach seemed to have been somewhat bruised.

You may remember that he had discovered that the well-known song, ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’, popular during the Boer War, had been parodied on the island by a former colleague and fellow comrade-in-arms, Colonel ‘Mad Jack’ Ruscombe-Green. It had shocked Reggie to learn that the colonel’s brief venture into the world of songsmithing had, apparently, occurred more than a century earlier. This was all very perplexing. As far as Reggie was concerned, Ruscombe-Green, who had been considerably younger than he was, and at the time a lieutenant, was last seen, no more than a dozen years earlier, causing mayhem in South Africa. To add to his confusion, this revelation had come not long after the young, and palely beautiful, Philomena Bucket had informed him that she had been born in the same year as his grandmother.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” advised Rhys Cranham. “There is little rhyme or reason to anything that happens on Hopeless.”

“But I can’t help but worry,” confided Reggie, “take that new chap on the island, what’s his name? Bencombe…”

“Benny?” said Rhys. “He’s alright.”

“Don’t let him hear you calling him Benny,” broke in Philomena. “It’s Benjamin or nothing, as far as he’s concerned,”

“Well, as I was about to say,” said Reggie, slightly annoyed at the interruption, “he reckons that a few weeks before he found himself here, Britain had crowned a new queen. Another Elizabeth, apparently.”

“Is that bad?” asked Rhys.

“My point is,” said Reggie, “how far in the future does this happen? When I left England, the royal male line looked fairly solid. There was no sign of any woman called Elizabeth, or anything else for that matter, who might be likely to ascend to the throne.”

“Good luck to her, I say,” declared Philomena. “You lot might not be so warlike with a woman in charge.”

“Don’t be too sure,” said Reggie. “Queen Victoria built an empire. The Empire upon which the sun never sets.”

“That’s because you can’t trust an Englishman in the dark,” muttered Philomena.

 Reggie was not the only person fretting about the island’s eccentric attitude towards time, and just about everything else, It had taken Benjamin Bencombe several weeks to come to terms with the strange fauna and flora, including that skeletal dog that seemed to get everywhere. He hated the eternal fog, and the total lack of any sort of modern amenity. Then there were all of the ghosts, even in the pub. No one batted an eyelid when that Jesuit priest drifted through the wall of the bar, or when Philomena’s grandmother manifested in the snuggery. And as for the headless woman haunting the toilet, how the devil did she get there? Then to cap it all, that massive yeti fellow turned up, speaking perfect English and treated by all and sundry as though his presence on the island was the most natural thing in the world.

 “I don’t know if I will be able to survive this place for very much longer,” he confided miserably to Philomena.

“Of course you will,” she reassured him, “everyone says that when they first come to the island.”

‘And the majority of them don’t last a fortnight,’ she thought to herself.

‘But I am a man of science, a botanist,” he insisted. “Without my books I am lost.”

“There are plenty of books up in the attics,” said Philomena. “There must be something up there that you’ll find useful.”

“I will look,” Benjamin sighed, ‘but I don’t hold out much hope.”

 It was some hours later when Philomena realised that Benjamin had not returned from the attics.

“Maybe he’s dropped off to sleep,” she said to Reggie. “I’ll send Rhys up to check on him.”

“No need, I’ll go up,” offered Reggie, who never minded a browse around the attics, himself.

Five minutes later he was back in the kitchen, his face deathly pale.

“Is everything alright?” asked Philomena. “Where is Benjamin?”

“He’s… he’s dead…” Reggie stammered.

Philomena was surprised at Reggie’s reaction; after all, he must have seen a lot of death during his time in the army.

“… And he looks as though he has been dead for several months,” he added, grimly.

 To be continued…

You may remember that Durosimi O’Stoat’s failed experiment had sent young Freya Draycott hurtling back a thousand years in time, to a green and fertile Hopeless, where a peaceful Danish settlement flourished, and a loving family greeted her with open arms. No one, including Durosimi, had any inkling of where the child might be, but to save face he had fashioned a tableau of thought-forms to give the impression that, on returning to the orphanage, Freya had been lifted into the sky by a huge raptor.

Miss Calder, whose ghostly presence was crucial to the smooth running of the Pallid Rock Orphanage, was incensed regarding the disappearance of Freya. Although the orphan had certainly appeared to have been transported into the heavens by a bird of prey, Miss Calder was convinced that, somehow, Durosimi had a hand in matters, and her preternatural senses smelt a rat, or, in this instance, an O’Stoat. Her eyes were bright to the point of incandescence as she relayed the events of the day to her friends, Philomena Bucket and the ghost of Marjorie Toadsmoor, who both listened, appalled. Marjorie, one of the first women to be admitted to Oxford University, had helped at the orphanage both before and after her untimely death; it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. At least, it seemed the most natural thing to do on the decidedly strange island of Hopeless, Maine.

Unlike Marjorie, Philomena was not familiar with the word ‘refulgent’. This is a pity, as it would have been useful later that day, when trying describe, to Ariadne Middlestreet, the strange light that had glowed in Miss Calder’s eyes. Whether Ariadne would have been aware of the meaning of the word is, of course, another matter.

“If the O’Stoats are involved – especially Durosimi – you’d be well advised to let things be,” said Ariadne, earnestly. “If Miss Calder wants to take him on, that’s up to her. After all, he can hardly kill her, can he? Whatever other horrors he could inflict on her, though, is anybody’s guess.”

“Yes, you’re right,” agreed Philomena, adding, “but you couldn’t help but love little Freya. I hope that she’s okay, wherever she is.”

Ariadne said nothing. If an overgrown hawk had really snatched the girl, she didn’t give a lot for her chances.

You or I, or indeed, Durosimi O’Stoat, might not know where to start in ascertaining Freya’s whereabouts. Not so, Miss Calder. For all of her attachment to the orphanage, she is, after all, a ghost and, by definition, inhabits a liminal landscape beyond our imagining, where the portal between life and death is a two-way door. It is a realm outside time and space as we know it. This is how she realised that Freya was still alive, for it was clear that the child’s shade had never walked those paths. It took a millennium of listening – a millennium condensed into mere seconds – for her to hear the voice of Helga, the vǫlva, the wise woman of the Danish settlement, welcoming Freya to her village.

It must be remembered that the role of the vǫlva, in Viking society, was much more than that of being a healer and herbalist; she was both revered and feared as a powerful shaman, intimate with the ways of the spirit-world. And so it was, while in a deep shamanic trance, that Helga sensed the presence of Miss Calder, probing the centuries with silver tendrils of esoteric energy, in her search for Freya. Spirit reached out to spirit and, without speech or language, Helga assured Miss Calder that the child was safe, well and very happy.

Miss Calder wasted no time in informing Reverend Davies of Freya’s fate. She was still angry, but grateful that no apparent harm had befallen the child. For his part, the Reverend had been adamant that he had no idea that Durosimi would use the girl in such a way, but that he would remonstrate with the man at the first opportunity. Being somewhat fearful of Durosimi, he effected this by asking Doc Willoughby to “have a quiet word with O’Stoat”.  The Doc, having scant desire to stir up trouble for himself, did little more than drop the issue into general conversation.

“I hear from Reverend Davies that young Freya has been deposited in the distant past,” Doc Willoughby told Durosimi. “Back to the Viking era, or so it appears.”

“Is that a fact?” replied Durosimi, seemingly unconcerned. “I don’t think you can put the blame squarely on my shoulders, Willoughby. After all, you were the one who brought her to me.”

“True… but I distinctly saw that huge bird take her away, and so did Reverend Davies and Miss Calder,” said the Doc, defensively. “It must have somehow dropped her through some wormhole to an earlier age. Obviously this is nothing to do with either of us.”

“Indeed,” agreed Durosimi. “These things happen.”

It was an hour later, after the Doc had left, that Durosimi allowed himself to think about the implications of that which he had done. He was not concerned about the orphan. There were more than enough of those already on Hopeless. Presumably the goat, his first subject, had been sent to that era as well. He was not too worried about that, either. What did give him pause for thought, however, was the half-dozen spoonwalkers that he had trapped and experimented with, while waiting for Freya to be delivered from the orphanage. It was safe to assume that they, too, had been transported to the Danish settlement. As far as he was aware, Hopeless at that time was free of the eternal fog and attendant horrors that haunted it now. It would seem, therefore, that those half-dozen spoonwalkers were, paradoxically, their own ancestors. If this was the case, and looking at things another way, had they not been sent there, no antecedents would have been in evidence to spawn future generations. This confusing state of affairs left Durosimi to conclude that spoonwalkers only existed on Hopeless today because he had sent six of the little nuisances back in time.

“I need a drink,” he thought to himself, massaging his head in an effort to make sense of things.

Meanwhile, and a thousand years earlier, Freya had been getting to grips with a new language, and doing well. Her skills were such that she fully understood when her adopted parents spoke in hushed tones about Lars Pedersen, the spoon-whittler. It seems that when he found that his stock of spoons and collection of gulls eggs had been stolen, he blamed a group of strange little demons that tottered around on stilts.

“Old Lars is definitely going crazy,” said Bendt to his wife, Sigrid. “Demons on stilts, indeed!”

Freya watched as Lars wandered blindly down the dusty road, as if in a trance. She knew all about spoonwalkers, and, like all of the orphans, was all too familiar with the legend of the ghostly Eggless Norseman of Creepy Hollow. Lars was not a ghost yet, she observed, but by the looks of him it would not be too long before he was. For one so young, Freya had a wise head on her shoulders, and decided that it would probably be best to keep this information to herself. After all, who would believe her? No, they would probably think that she was as crazy as Lars.