English Gothic
These stories are those of a land of ancient ways, fields, woods and church towers, somehow preserved, but now poised between old and new, and between science and the supernatural.
‘…the balance of the old and new is changing…’
The Vale is a lost part of middle England where the walled villages are sometimes terrorised by wolves in the winter and where a gentle fading magic still persists in the fields and woods. The balance of the old and new is changing with the arrival of science and various charlatans and visionaries. The mysterious Mrs Van Dijk and her woodsman companion Howard, inhabitants of the hamlet of Earls Court, watch the changing seasons and are drawn into the sometimes-dangerous schemes of others.
Comments on the English Gothic series
‘…charming and intriguing stories…’
‘…quirky and fascinating…’
'…I’ve read nothing like the English Gothic stories…’
Books in the series…
English Gothic…the first book in the series
A woman from an isolated farm is plagued by a winter visitor and abused by her haunted and self-pitying brother while the fields around turn to mud under a grey sky. Mrs Van Dijk visits the farm to spin a charm of protection against the arrival of wolves from the north but the cold visitor will not be ignored. A mad surgeon, the leader of a cult of weak-minds and innocents, roams the fields looking for evidence of the ancient practice of trepanning, leaving those that oppose him dead, until Mrs van Dijk and Howard stand in his way. A half spirit- half man, the bee-master, brings honey bees to the Vale but his other motives are obscure, and his exotic presence seems more to do with death than the sweet taste of honey.
Extract from English Gothic…
Mrs van Dijk followed her. The white thing was a bird, an owl. It had been nailed firmly to the door, a nail cleanly driven through each big wing. There was blood spotted on the bird’s grey and white feathers, and its head drooped down. Blood trickled down the door. The owl had just been put there and it was quite dead.
‘Johnnie’ moaned Aimee again.
Extract from English Gothic…
The body was lying on the table, not on the floor, though it was clear that that was where the blood had come from. It was clothed – a thin man with dark trousers and an overall. He had been laid on the table as if for a medical operation. One of the constables was in the way, standing with a lantern over the body so Sloan couldn’t see the upper half.
With a light feeling in his stomach and saliva gathering in his mouth Sloan came forward, trying to show the older constables that he wasn’t scared.
In the light the shoulders were clear and the dark hair. But no it wasn’t dark hair. The man’s hair was grey but coated with blood.
Where the ear was. Near where the ear was….
Sloan panicked. He turned because he thought he would vomit. It wasn’t just the strangeness of the wound, its horrible precision, it was the heat in the there – from the men and from the big lanterns, and the sweet metallic smell of blood.
Extract from English Gothic…
Horatio thrust upward and the hatchet-like blade of the tool plunged into the bottom of the hive, and a sliver of golden honey slopped out striping across Howard’s net. A long tendril, like a gold fibre lit by the sun, hung from the bottom of the nest. It was like a huge broken egg suspended in a tree. The honey was thick on the net. Howard could see bees caught in the honey. One or two flew around, disorientated. One landed on the sleeve of his shirt. It was very dark and had a long thorax, coloured a bit like dark honey. He shook it off and Howard saw it drop to the forest floor without flying.
Extract from English Gothic…
‘Now we wait’ he said.
Howard moved further away from the log, and lay in long grass, his head on his rucksack, his straw hat over his face. He watched the bright blue sky through chinks in the straw and listened for the bees.
For some reason he was no longer sleepy. He was curious about the saucer, but he knew he wouldn’t get an answer from his companion. It would be better just to wait - besides he could rest his feet. There was a long walk back, and perhaps more walking in this distant forest.
The sound of bees intensified. At first he heard them fly past, the thin buzzes came and went as they passed over his sleeping form, but then he fancied he heard the buzzing for longer, then the sound of bees circling. Through the chinks of the straw he sometimes saw their dark specks spiralling.
Gothic Heart…the second book in the series
In this, the second book of the English Gothic series, Mrs Van Dijk, the mysterious village apothecary and her companion Howard, further delve into the secrets of the Vale, a land where weak magic still persists, and where wolves roam between the walled villages.
It is deep winter in the Vale and Mrs Van Dijk agrees to teach the wild and extraordinary daughter of a farmer, revealing the depths of her own strange art, but also the darkness at the heart of a lonely farm. In the spring, a poor woman employs Mrs Van Dijk to look for a distant Dutch ancestor, the elusive Titus, and is drawn into a story of genius, but also of loss and decaying memory. As winter draws in again, a pair of medical men roaming the fields of the Vale for sufferers of a strange disease of wolves and men, come up against the ferocity of the wild.
Extract from Gothic Heart…
‘You’re Mr Crakoe?’ said Howard at last. He felt like he ought to hold his hand out to shake. He tried to smile. Crakoe – if it was him – was so strange. Just staring.
‘Your daughter said that I could cut the wood’ said Howard, trying again to break the silence.
‘I’m sorry’ said Crakoe at last. ‘My daughter….’ His voice croaked – he held up his hand to his mouth, as if he was surprised that sound had come out.
‘I’m sorry that my daughter left you in the maze….’ said Crakoe again. He waved over his shoulder at the house and the maze in the distance, then turned back blinking his large light eyes which were watering – perhaps with the cold wind, perhaps with some strange emotion.
Extract from Gothic Heart…
It was astonishing! She went up to the window and held some of the blank pages up at the light, looking for something. Perhaps a message in faded ink or an imprint of writing. They were clean and white and had never been written on.
She sat down and reread the last entry and thought that there was a note of finality in it – something that suggested that Tirza’s older life was over. It was as if something had expired or become worn out, like the last of an old stone that had been worn away in a riverbed, or an old wound that had healed over, or the scar in the bark of tree that had been covered by new growth.
But how could such an interesting story be forgotten? Or never be told?
Extract from Gothic Heart…
Mrs Vincent was slow, picking her way carefully on the cobbles, occasionally looking up. She carried a large bag from which green shoots protruded, perhaps spring onions. She looked behind and called up the street. Mrs Van Dijk couldn’t hear what she was saying, but there was a child behind Mrs Vincent and the cart, walking even slower than she was. It was a boy. He had his hand in his mouth and his face was red. He was crying silently. He stopped and seemed to look into the window of a shop, and Mrs Vincent turned and walked up the steep cobbles to get him. Mrs Van Dijk heard her voice for the first time – shrill above the noise of the horse and cart.
So Mrs Vincent had a son.
Extract from Gothic Heart…
There was a murmur from several of the older residents of Earls Court. The presence of wolves had been at one time more frequent and this latest report was the first for a year or so, but they knew how dangerous the Vale could be. Some of the young people didn’t believe in the problem, perhaps because it had been a long time since there had been a lot of wolves, but perhaps also because the villages had been well prepared the last few times. For years, few animals had been lost and no person had been taken. In fact in the years of the new Century, though wolves had been heard, not a single animal had ever been seen. Perhaps some of the younger residents of Earls Court didn’t even believe they were out there.
Woven Gothic…the third book in the series
In a cold winter in the Vale, Mrs Van Dijk, the mysterious village apothecary and her companion Howard, are called to investigate a carving in an abandoned church. The carving reveals a century-old story of rivalry and love in the stony, austere land east of the Vale. In the spring a mysterious traveller - a charlatan or visionary - arrives in the Vale in a flying machine offering a glimpse of worlds never seen. In the summer Howard is drawn into danger, and only church bells can spur his lost memory. These stories are those of a land of ancient ways, fields, woods and church towers, somehow preserved, but now poised between old and new, and between science and the supernatural.
Extract from Woven Gothic…
But the object was stricken in some way. It was down low, lopsided and asymmetrical. The platform underneath was no longer quite underneath and the surface of the thing which now Howard could perceive was made of cloth – something like sail cloth – was almost touching the trees. It was not far away and had slowed down. Howard couldn’t see the man, but he heard his shouts. There was no roaring but he could smell something strange, a chemical smell, a bad smell of burning.
He had no idea yet what the thing was – he felt perhaps that it was some kind of sail like a great sail for a big boat – but even then he felt concerned that it was stricken, that it was not right. It seemed to him like a great delicate object. He didn’t want it to fall to Earth, but it was – and rapidly.
Extract from Woven Gothic…
It was hard to take in at first – the size of the frieze – for it was a frieze. It made Mrs Van Dijk immediately think of a carving that she’d seen when she was in Greece as a girl. But this carving was remarkably fine. They hadn’t seen it at first because the carving itself, its full sweep, was so much an organic part of the arch. The sculptor or the craftsman had been very skillful – somehow using the original shape of the arch, its curve and its slender length – to emphasise the things that were depicted. The strange scenes…
She couldn’t begin to understand what the depictions meant. But the central image - the main carving from which everything else seemed to stem - was very unusual.
Her neck was already hurting staring up at the arch. Howard was doing the same. She smiled – he was looking with such concentration at the central figure. His eyes were wide.
Extract from Woven Gothic…
She felt sudden wild panic. If what she thought was going on in the house was right, they were in terrible trouble.
She froze watching the constables walking around outside, talking. There were three of them. One moved toward the house and looked in at the downstairs window. Mrs Van Dijk, looking down, was almost vertically above him. His cap was dark blue.
She heard Howard’s footsteps behind her on the bare floorboards. She made her face urgent, holding her finger to her lips for him to be quiet.
The constable below moved to the door and she heard the handle of the door turn.
She shoved Howard back from the window and hissed: ‘we have to get out. The constables….if they see this and see us here, we’ll be in very big trouble’
Extract from Woven Gothic…
At night Mrs Van Dijk dreamed of the ascent of the balloon. She saw it from a little way off – as if she was ascending herself at the same rate following the strange object’s progress. But the balloon was different in the dream - not a simple spherical bag of air. It seemed like an eye with the pupil and iris on the upper edge of the globe staring unceasingly, without eyelid, up into the atmosphere, into space, as it broke through cloud layer after cloud layer, relentless.
The Last Horizon…the fourth book in the series
Howard meets a traveller, a follower of St Antony, obsessed with building a monastery that floats above the ground. He and Mrs Van Dijk follow him to Wales to build a structure in the mountains that looks out over the plains, but construction is fraught with difficulty and the traveller’s past seems likely to catch up with him. As the summer wanes, Howard and Mrs Van Dijk visit the city of Edinburgh to investigate a sinister anatomist who claims to find and study the remains of mermaids, but discover darkness at the centre of the city of the Scottish Enlightenment. As the winter closes in, Howard is fascinated by a pair of buzzards that nest near the village of Earls Court, and reads the legend of Icarus, while Mrs van Dijk worries that his dreams portend danger.
Extract from The Last Horizon…
Out to the east there were layers of dark clouds building above the sun. Howard thought it was the most desolate view he had ever seen. He reached out to hold Mrs Van Dijk around the shoulders because it was such an effort to stand up. The folded ancient land with its ancient sun was utterly empty and desolate – so cold – so stripped and scoured by wind. A place too brutal for human life.
But in a small revelation Howard saw that it was a glimpse of something bigger than human life. Looking far down the slope he could just see some of the debris of the wooden monastery dark in shadow. The mountain had simply shrugged it off its shoulder. It had not stood even for a full night.
Extract from The Last Horizon…
With the lighted candle they stepped slowly down the aisle listening to the gritty sound of their boots on the stone floor. Their voices boomed a little in the small space. They must be quiet!
The big tanks were at the bottom end. The first figure was, as it had been a few days before, lying on its back like a stone statue in a church, but shrouded in yellow formaldehyde.
Extract from The Last Horizon…
Howard was close enough to see the man’s face and his expression was angry. He held up a hand to indicate that Howard should stay away, his palm pushed out towards him, warding him off. Howard was interrupting their work. Clarence turned as well at that moment, his face taut. He still had hold of the rope. His expression changed from recognition of Howard, to surprise. His mouth opened. He’d seen the shotgun.
Extract from The Last Horizon…
At the rounded top of the ridge was a cairn of stones and Howard and Mrs Van Dijk sat there blinking west into the sun, waiting for the rest of the group. Mrs Van Dijk hadn’t seen the view that way before. It seemed like an endless land of valley and mountain and in the distance some hint of a silver sea. The mountains – the colour of old leather – were folded in bumps and horns that looked like the worn down remains of ancient higher mountains. The valleys between were dark with residual trees. She could believe, looking over the wild west, that no one lived there. It was as Mr Deane had said: the valley from which they had climbed was the edge of everything. Like St Anthony’s wilderness of desert but here a wilderness of ancient hills.
Land’s End…the fifth book in the series
In this, the fifth book of the English Gothic Series, Mrs Van Dijk and Howard set off across the North Sea to Amsterdam, but are abandoned by their boat, the Mabillard, on an unknown wild coast. They seek shelter with a colony of followers of Saint Syncletica, amongst the dunes, only to have to face assailants from the sea that imperil their lives and those of the women of the colony. Leaving for Amsterdam, they travel with an exotic and fiercely independent group of drovers taking sheep to market across the plains of north Germany, living under canvas, crossing rivers and fighting off attackers. Mrs Van Dijk and Howard finally arrive late in Amsterdam to receive the proof copies of her book, The Flowering Plants of Northern Europe, from the Dutch publisher, but come up against an old grievance from her past which threatens their lives and separates them across the wide North Sea.
Extract from Land’s End…
The women began to sing after a while a strange song that was more of a rhythm than a melody. They took turns to sing some little phrase or shout something out. The rhythm was the same as the cutting, and the chop and slap of the spade blades had a place in the music. The exhaled breath of the cutters became rhythmic too, making the music seem heavy and primitive – not like the ethereal spiritual music of the night before. Sometimes in the strange rhythmic song, the women would laugh uproariously at something one of them had said or sung.
Extract from Land’s End…
The dunes got lower to their left and at last the beach started to curl away to the east. A vast expanse of sea opened in front of them and the dunes fell away to flat land. To their relief they saw a fence post driven into the sandy soil. There was no fence leading off from it. The grass was mixed marram and a softer finer grass that cattle or sheep could eat. They wondered if it was cultivated land, or at least land that had been prepared for grazing. Looking ahead, the now flatter land had no dunes. Beyond the big expanse of sea there was nothing. It was just sea all around and a tiny flat shelf of land. The sky was like a huge reflection of the sea. Howard thought it was like walking along under a huge mirror.
Extract from Land’s End…
Howard was fascinated. He stood, his hands on his hips, a certain distance from the seated Indian but his eyes never left Singh’s dextrous hands. A long brownish coil moved in the basket and a small flick of a tail came from one end. Singh reached in, his arm extended, and held something out of sight. He was still humming. More coils appeared and the box fell away and rolled in the grass. Howard stepped back, but Singh had the head of the snake in his hand and was watching it face to face, as if he was about to start a conversation. The skin of the snake was darker over its head, but mostly it was darkish green and brown, the colour of muddy water. Singh fed the snake into the netted enclosure and then started on the second basket which contained a shorter fatter snake. When both were in the net, hidden in the long grass, Singh took some of the rough meat from the bag and threw it in after the snakes.
Extract from Land’s End…
The cold was alright, he thought, because at least he couldn’t feel that bad pain in his back and his torn ear. His mind was clear, he thought, in this new cold. But then he knew he was facing downward and he needed to breathe but he couldn’t remember how. His chest expanded and he took in an amount of water but this wasn’t good. He needed to roll so that his head was out. To feel for the bottom. His boots frantically twisted in the water but there was nothing to feel. He was out of his depth. His clothes were suddenly heavy, coarse. A flap of his jacket floated. He opened his eyes to bright sun and breathed. He was floating, moving with the slow tide. He breathed again and the clothes had billowed up around him, buoying him up. So he wasn’t sinking. But he would, he would.