Wray Hunt - Satan's Daughter

continuing mini-'live at the witch trials! season', an emergency salvage operation on "review" of a minor gem from Vault Mk. I

Wray Hunt - Satan's Daughter (Nel, Aug 1975. Originally Robert Hale, 1970)



Blurb

"Shame, pain and power," the gypsy said, "all three are yours - or nothing."

Thus the gypsies told the fortune of little Alys, daughter of the vicious broom-maker of the Purbeck moors.
Alys kept this dream of her future to herself, to give her hope through the years of pain and starvation until she was old enough to run away and seek her fortune.

But the world was not kind to her, and she found that she had to be harsh, ruthless and cruel to achieve her ambitions. She was even willing to join a witches' coven to practice their potions on the King, and so become his mistress. At last she had the power he had always sought, but at what cost to her eternal soul ....


Set in Dorset during the reign of Henry VII. When we first meet her, Alys Hughes lives in a hovel on the outskirts of Studland village,with her vicious, drunken slob of a father, Will the broom-maker. She's aged around fourteen when a gypsy tells her what destiny holds in store - "shame, pain, power - or nothing." Alys decides that "power" holds the most appeal and sets out to achieve it.

Alys befriends a kindly hermit, Richard Hill, who teaches her to read, and, following another beating from her father after she's caught poaching, runs off to live with him. Richard isn't having any of it and, when Alys attempts to seduce him, he passes her over to his former lover, Agnes Bartley, who is now the Mother Superior at Tarent Nunnery. Alys is a fast learner but she's not Religious material and embarks on several nocturnal escapades, blackmailing her fellow novices into keeping quiet. Unfortunately, crabby old Str. Joan catches her indulging in rough and tumble with a local lad, and Alys is beaten in front of the entire Convent. To avenge herself, our heroine writes a curse in blood, nails it to Str. Joan's bed, then desecrates and burns down a church. As the building collapses, her nemesis is crushed under falling masonry.

Alys heads back to the moors and Richard, only to learn that the hermit has been tarred and feathered, his hut destroyed by boozed up peasants from The Grey Nag led by her father. Furious, Alys throws in her lot with old Jonet Drew and her cackling coven. As we leave her for the time being she's just pledged herself to Satan, and is about to witness her first Sabbat.

To date Satan's Daughter reads like an attempt at Gothic revival crossed with one of those cautionary 'non-fiction' survivor books from the 'seventies (ie, Dorothy Irvine's From Witchcraft To Christ although the cover suggests Alys is unlikely to find salvation). Bonus points for the cod-medieval dialogue which allows several characters to get in some quality cussing - "Rot me!", "Vermin blast them!" and the wonderful "Shog off!" There's also lots of threatening to do something nasty to somebody's "gizzards".



making slow progress. Nothing to do with the book - its very enjoyable in a Ronald Holmes: Witchfinder General way. The Sabbat went well. Alys got in some quality hanky panky with Satan (or perhaps it was somebody dressed up), and now she's been taken on by Lady Jane Deane, mother of the pretender Perkin Warbeck who was hung along with the Earl of Warbeck for conspiracy (fact). It transpires that Lady Jane dug up her son post-execution and one of Alys first tests is to kiss his rotting face (possibly not fact). Now she's at the centre of a plot versus Henry VII and has been put into "total seduction training" .....



Alys having effortlessly secured a position as Harry the Bastard's latest confidante and "pleasure wench", Lady Jane and her cronies reveal the finer details of their outrageous plot: Once Alys has poisoned Henry, John de la Pole, a numbskull descendent of Edward III, will be installed as John II, a puppet Ruler with the Satanists pulling his strings. One more Black Mass - with Alys serving as the Altar - should do the trick!

All I've been able to find out about 'Wray Hunt' was that he was Angus Joseph, a contributor to Boys Own during the late 'twenties and early 'thirties. Satan's Daughter is darker stuff, building to a conclusion that is grimly inevitable almost from the off. As these historical Nel's go, its a far "better" book than The Terror Of The Seven Crypts (although Aubin's novel scores higher in terms of cheerfully mindless entertainment) and, provided you've the patience with the archaic dialogue, there's plenty to recommend Satan's Daughter.