Blythewood closed his eyes, as if picturing something in his mind’s eye, and spoke in a tenor I’d not yet heard him speak in: hushed, almost sanctimonious. He’d spoken like a showman up until this point. If he was continuing to do so, he did so now knowing he had fixed my attention fully. Were he to whisper, I would strain to catch every syllable.

  “Louis wanted us to film something thereabouts,” Blythewood said, “which is why we considered and did use parts of Montacute House, but there’s no castles to be found in or about the Somerset Levels, you see. It was all swamps, really, for eons, peppered with island settlements until the 18th and 19th centuries, but there Glastonbury Tor rises, and there it stands to this century and the next, and there Louis found the box.”

  Blythewood paused for effect, keeping his eyes closed still.

  “You see, before the real estate took off for me, before I made my first horror, my finances were—well, let us say, times were lean, very lean indeed. Near suicide at one point, silly me. I’d poured all I had into ASHES TO ASHES, the first of the horror films I produced, and a succession of my estate agent dealings had collapsed, and I was drowning in debts. Everything was gone dodgy, but Louis told me he’d take care of it. That he’d found something I could use to sell, or use as collateral for a loan. That’s all it was originally meant to be, honestly.”

  Blythewood opened his eyes wide now, looking right into mine.

  “Louis had found the box. It was as you see it, with your own eyes. He’d found the golden casket, during excavations on Glastonbury Tor, and he—pilfered it, he did, kept it to give to his brother to sell or to use. Me, his brother. That’s what brothers from families like ours are willing to do for one another, you see.”

  Again, he closed his eyes, speaking softer, softer still.

  “Well, lo and behold, ASHES TO ASHES hit paydirt, and the luck returned with the properties. It all sorted itself out, thanks to ASHES. I was soon able to bail myself out, and repay everyone, including Louis. I returned the casket, the box, to Louis. In the meanwhile, he’d done a spot of research, he found that the Venerable Bede described it, he learned what was within it. What was within, and without. What. It. Is.”

  “V-Venerable...Bede?” I asked.

  “Ah, Venerable Bede,” Blythewood replied, spelling out the name for me, “got that? Yes, Bede. Anglo-Saxon historian, a scientist for his time, theologian, author. Centuries ago, Bede wrote something called the Ecclesiastical History of the English People,34 and in there, Louis found references to what we had in our hands. What it held.”

  Another pause, his eyes slits, peering out at me, a pinpoint of light on each, like two gleaming gemstones—

  “You never do get a good look at it in any of the films. That was deliberate. The casket itself was quite plain, the only decorations were rectangles slightly smaller than each side and the flat top. Purely decorative, and precious little of that. It was made of solid gold, not foil laid onto wood or gesso. The four sides were one long rectangle folded inwards to make three corners, with the fourth being the seam that was soldered shut. The bottom was a separate piece joined to the sides and the lid was hinged at the back. The lid overhung the front side a little so you could lift the lid easily. The lack of decoration makes it difficult to date, and as Louis told me more than once, you can’t date metal with radiocarbon. You may be able to date organic material found with gold, and Louis told me he found the casket under some decayed boards, possibly an ancient wooden floor. Louis said the casket’s wood dated to about the time the Romans abandoned Britain, between ca. 380 and 410 AD. Details of the goldwork are consistent with Late Celtic techniques. Which fits the chronology.”

  Blythewood paused, as if for dramatic effect, forever the showman. He dropped his voice, speaking softly.

  “The casket held seven objects, tucked safely within, set back into the back edge of the lid, top and bottom, at the hinge. Very peculiar, that, as you see in the films. You’d open the casket just a crack, and they’d be peering out at you, from the darkness.”

  I cleared my throat, afraid to break the spell, but I managed to croak, “and—they were—”

  “Gemstones, lad,” Blythewood whispered, “seven in all, according to Louis and his research, seven gemstones embodying the seven regions of Britain, as it existed at whatever time the box was constructed. Louis knew that, too, he’d found out, but he never told me, or if he did, I can no longer recall. Each object, each of those gemstones, supposedly contained an ancient latent power. They were, he told me, ‘magicked’ in each of the seven regions, then brought together in that casket for a purpose. It was all a bit arcane, but Louis swore it was so.”

  “This is—” I stammered.

  “Hear me out, now. Contained thus, together, in the safety of the casket, they forged something essential for Britain. Louis called it ‘a pan-regional consciousness,’ a phrase he used time and time again. I call it the Spirit of Britain. In close proximity to one another, the gems allow Britain to stand united against foreign invaders. All invaders.”

  At this point Blythewood did something uncanny. His voice changed, became deeper, and he spread his arms, and began to recite:

  “...the spirit of Britain—that certain men

  Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood

  Loved freedom better than their lives; and when

  The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood

  And charged into the storm’s black heart, with sword

  Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed

  With a strange majesty that the heathen horde

  Remembered when all were overwhelmed;

  And made of them a legend...”35

  I’m not sure what sound I involuntarily made at this point, but it prompted Blythewood to consider me anew, that unnerving Cheshire Cat grin in place.

  “And remember this. The date of the casket’s floor was not long before the, ah, ‘mythical’ King Arthur. If he existed, he was likely a Romano-British war leader.”

  A sort of rapture, a zeal, determined Blythewood’s expression as he leaned in closer to me.

  “You see, in a way, even before we knew of it, the casket and what it held was our path into our future. With Louis’s help, we’d made the two war films, about the mysterious spectral swordsman, then the ancient archers, the spirits saving both Britain and the French in the Great War. Crude affairs, true, but something other than making money moved me to make them, and something other than money led Louis to that casket, to the box. And inside, what was inside, was worth more than any treasure. It allowed enough of the Romano-British population to survive the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, and then to survive the Vikings, to survive their own territorial squabbles with one another, ‘invading’ one another yet Britain survived, and then to survive the Great War, and then the Blitz.”

  “Then, why,” I hesitated to ask, “why remove the jewels?”

  “All good things come to those who wait, but why wait?” Blythewood said. “Then again, ‘why show their having been removed?,’ one might ask, and well you might.”

  I simply stared at him, mouth agape.

  I was here to talk about movies, his movies, and now he was telling me—

  —what was he telling me?

  “Don’t lose your way now,” Blythewood laughed. “We’ve come so far! Here, have a cup of coffee,” he said, waving to someone out of my view. “You’ll need it if you’re to make it to the midnight hour.”

  A soft step from behind, and a young woman I’d not yet seen gently reached towards the table with a tray sporting two cups brimming with coffee. She bowed her head and smiled courteously.

  “Sweetener and milk already on the table,” Blythewood cheerfully asserted, “still one more film to go, and your first and foremost question yet to be answered. You can take your cup with you, if you wish, Mayer awaits you.”

  Blythewood waved the young woman off impatiently without coming off as being rude; it was a paternal motion, executed without taking his eyes off me.

  “If you are ready, we can wrap up well before the agreed upon hour. Let me tell you, the film you’re about to experience is the most personal of them all, for me. Had to wait until Trevelyan was gone, he’d have never let me make the one you’re about to see. He was out in the summer of 1971, and a new fellow, Stephen Murphy, took over as director of the BBFC, before that overzealous wanker James Ferman took the helm in late spring of ’75.”

  “What wouldn’t Trevelyan permit you to do, to show?” I asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” Blythewood said. “Short window, as it turned out, but sufficient to my needs. Settled a score or two, I did, with this one.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Ah, you’ll see,” Blythewood concluded. “I think you’ll get a kick out of this one.”

  He sipped his coffee slowly, savoring the flavor, and chose his next words carefully, it seemed.

  “It’s all about settling scores with me,” he said, “as it should be for us all.”

  Thus, with a wave of his hand, he concluded the conversation. As his attention returned to his laptop—already open and up on the table, alongside his cup of coffee—I excused myself with my own coffee and my Moleskine and some trepidation.

  Settling scores? As I left Blythewood to whatever it was he was occupying himself with all day—again, the BBC, again, the newsreaders, their voices somehow more pressing, more urgent—I saw Mayer awaiting my return in the doorway of the screening room.

  Careful not to spill a drop, I walked into semi-darkness, steadying and readying myself for the final dose of Blythewood Bloodshed.

  28Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg of Amicus Films; SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN was the production Blythewood was referring to, filmed over four weeks from May to June, 1969. Blythewood contracted both actors immediately upon completion of the Amicus production.

  29Blythewood is referring to Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s innovative independent feature film IT HAPPENED HERE (1964), an ‘alternative history’ faux-documentary in which Germany won WWII and ruled the UK. Brownlow and Mollo worked on the film for eight years, beginning when they were teenagers; the German army was played in part by former members of the British Union of Fascists, SS and Wehrmacht soldiers and airmen were played by German ex-military, and by amateur war recreationists, many appearing in their own uniforms.

  30Scripts was the name of an Australian paperback publisher, along with Horwitz. Scripts published The Kings Cross Racket (1965), Vice Trap, Kings Cross (1966), The Swingers (1967), and The Spungers (1967), Horwitz published Flat 4 Kings Cross, Model School (both 1963, kept in print into the late 1960s), Kings Cross Affair (1965), etc.

  31“Richard Allen” was just one of many nom de plumes for James Moffat; Leo Bruce was the credited author of Death of a Bovver Boy (1974).

  32BLUE BLOOD (1974), based on The Carry-Cot (1972) by Alexander Thynne (who later dropped the ‘e’ from his last name) aka Viscount Weymouth; the movie’s ad line read, “Who was possessed by the Devil at Longleat?”

  33A portion of Devizes Castle joined the National Historical List for England—which I presume is the same as the National Heritage List that Blythewood referenced here—as a “Scheduled Monument” in February, 1953, and the rest as a “Listed Building” in September, 1972. See https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1021375 and https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1249366

  34Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, circa AD 731.

  35I am only able to quote Blythewood’s recitation because I recalled enough of what he’d said to find the poem online. He was reciting a passage from Francis Brett Young’s poem “Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus.” The Latin title translates as “Here Lies Arthur, the Once and Future King,” quoting Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

  THE SQUEAMISH

  STEPHEN VOLK

  “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

  The Bible

  (somewhere)

  THE DOMINICAN MONASTERY OF OUR LADY of the Rosary sat at the highest point in the Bavarian Alps, its vertical walls, devoid of ornamentation and seldom broken by the indulgence of windows, as sheer and grey as the cliffs under it. Snow had fallen thickly and silently, as if creeping up unawares on the devout, and when night had fallen, a bitter cold descended, accompanied by a wind that used the funnel of the valley to circle, yowling, like a beast lost in the storm.

  Within, two nuns at their bedsides, kneeling. Sister Hildegard. Barely fourteen. Looking even younger. Sister Ingrid, older in years but in other ways too—ways that Sister Hildegard did not want to know, but sometimes did. The room filling now with an amber glow they perceived even though their eyes were tightly closed. No sooner had Mother Ursula’s candle left, the door closed, and her footsteps faded, than Sister Ingrid shot to her feet.

  “We have to pray!”

  “You can pray for me.” Sister Ingrid snatched her wrist free of the younger one’s grasp.

  “Where are you going?” Sister Hildegard’s face drained of colour. “You can’t!” But Sister Ingrid had already lit a candle, and put a finger to her lips. It was a severe contravention of the rules to wander from your bed after dark, yet something of the night beckoned. Something beyond a fear of physical punishment drew her down the long, bone-chilling corridors to the bedroom next to the kitchen and washhouse...the room set aside for invalids.

  Entering, she placed her candlestick on a shelf and kicked off her sandals. She could make out the dark hair of the figure in the bed against the whiteness of the pillow. The peak of one knee under the hairy blanket. The arm, almost lifeless, hanging off the side of the bed.

  She hung up her rosary, together with the wooden cross she wore over her heart—they all did, it was part of the uniform—then hastily, impatiently unbuckled her leather belt, letting that drop to the cold flagstone floor.

  Perhaps the man felt her palm’s gentle prod against his shoulder as he rolled over, bare chested, to face the ceiling, or heard the sough of the springs under him as she squatted astride his naked hips. But as she ground against him, the stranger’s laboured breathing became all the more claggy and feverish. His eyes did not open. Perhaps to him it seemed like the most delicious and fantastic dream.

  She lifted off her scapular, discarding the white serge habit of the Order of St Dominic. Her coif. Her mantle. Blonde hair falling long and unencumbered to her shoulders. Eyes closed, now, in accompaniment to her journey towards ecstasy, she did not see—could not see—as his exertions increased in vigour, the two spots in the bandage around his neck redden darkly. Nor that two of the teeth clenched and exposed were—pointed...

  Suddenly his guttural breathing turned into a snarl. He grabbed her by the upper arms, fingernails digging deep into the flesh.

  The nun’s eyes widened in horror, a gasp rendering her cry a ghost. Trapped now. Held there, as if run through with a spear—a spear thrust up between her legs.

  And as she hangs there—and she does hang, like a doll on a string—framed by the V of her thighs, rivulets of scarlet liquid pour out of her, over the Stranger’s belly.

  Her shadow, cast on the stone wall, thrown into a shuddering contortion.

  Her throat gurgling.

  Her body jerking, lolling.

  The blood gushing out of her in a raging torrent...more blood than is possible for a human body to contain—surely?...gallons...washing over his abdomen like a tide...splattering his face...soaking the bed clothes, now sodden with gore...the red wave pooling on the flagstones beneath... widening to each corner of the room as if a water main had burst, or a barrel of claret had been punctured by a pick-axe and the contents, under intense pressure, released in an endless, unstoppable fountain.

  “This won’t do. Oh dear. My goodness. This really will not do.”

  In the viewing theatre of the Cameo Screening Room in Soho, Geraldine Copper scribbled ferociously with her pen; the special pen with the little light attached that enabled her to write in the dark.

  “Is everything all right, Miss Copper?” At the press of a button, Dave, the projectionist, could communicate with the auditorium. From his eyrie he had noticed the petite redhead stiffen and squirm.

  “No, it’s not all right,” said Geraldine, as much to herself as to anyone. “It’s not all right in the slightest.”

  Notebook perched on her knee, she nevertheless continued watching, right to the end credits. It was her job, after all. Even so, she was always glad to step out into the light after having subjected herself to such sleazy and unappetizingly dull concoctions at the low-rent end of the British film industry. Even the rather sordid walk from Poland Street via Berwick Street, with its market stall detritus, to Wardour Street was enough to replenish her.

  She climbed the grubby, ill-lit stairwell to the office of the English Board of Film Censors, passing the production offices of dubious companies where girls auditioned in front of fat so-called producers for so-called glamour parts that were anything but, and past editing rooms from which she could often hear the bleating or panting of women, or guttural voices of men, gunfire, brakes, footsteps, punctuated by loud, shrill cries of violent assault.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To lunch, Miss Copper,” said tall, lanky Denise, who had recently converted to miniskirts. At twenty-six, only two years younger than Geraldine, she really should have a little more decorum and self-respect.

  “I have a letter to dictate.”

  “Yes, Miss Copper.”

  The secretary hung her coat back up, sat down and took the cover off her electric typewriter.