Once Around the Sun - a Sweeping Saga Spanning 1,400 Years Magically Intertwined With a Whirlpool of Possession

by D.G. Finlay

Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Sol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: In the late 400s, a tribe from Jutland, the Swertings, led by Breca, arrive on the coast of England at what is now the town of Gosport. They massacre the inhabitants of a Roman villa and settle. Aelfrith is made headman of a group and given an area as his own. He takes Gulda, a servant girl from the villa, as his wife, and has several children, the oldest son being Stoc. When Stoc is a teenager, Aelfrith and Breca die, making Stoc headman of his village. He and Leit, Breca's son, exchange sisters with each other in marriage, Stoc marrying Moanh and Leit marrying Bronwen.

When Stoc and Moanh's first child is about to be born the evening after Beltanae, a huge boar attacks Leit's village, killing his younger brother. Stoc joins the hunts and kills the boar, taking its head. While he is gone, his two sons, Waylin and Bran are born. Stoc carves a tusk of the boar into a pendant of two young boars, giving it to Moanh.

A year after the twins' birth, a plague infects the village, and Gulda tells Stoc that the druids have commanded he must sacrifice his firstborn son. Stoc refuses until Moanh becomes sick, and brings Waylin to an oak grove, where a druid drains Waylin's blood and commands Stoc to spread it on the border of the village while the sun is rising. The druid says that Waylin's spirit will be with Bran, and the plague recedes.

As Bran grows, Waylin speaks and prophecies to him in his head. During a famine, Waylin tells Stoc and Bran to "offer their seed" to the river Ayll. The two masturbate into the river, and make a huge catch, saving the village. Bran is close to his sister Brigid, and Waylin taunts him that she will lose her virginity during Beltanae. Bran and Brigid sneak away from the festivities, and have sex. Waylin becomes more distant from Bran, until Saxons attack the village, which Waylin warns of moments before. The village is overrun, and Waylin lures Bran into a burning building where he dies. Brigid is the only survivor, and takes the boar pendant from Moanh's corpse.

1000 years later, during the reign of King James I, Polycarpus Miller gives his twin daughters Brigid "Biddy" and Rebecca "Becky" their 10th birthday gift, the heirloom boar pendant to Biddy, and a copy he made himself to Becky. The two feel a heat in the original pendant, and a presence in the oak grove, and that night have a shared dream of covetous eyes and burning which causes Biddy to become physically hot. The dream recurs regularly, and at fifteen, Biddy asks their father if there have been twins in the family. He tells of a twin brother and sister of his grandfather, the boy dying young and the girl dying in childbirth at seventeen, the pendant passing from the son of the girl to his grandfather. Biddy wonders whether the pendant and the dream are connected to a twin killing another, and swears to herself never to harm Becky.

Biddy enters the tutelage of Meg Beazley, an old witch, teaching her to read. Some months later, Becky is fired from their job serving at a local manor, and Biddy uses the power of a presence within herself to kill the manor lady's dog, and later make the lady herself sick, but suspicion falls on Becky. Their mother falls dead at fifty-six, and Becky come under further suspicion. Biddy meets Richard Gardenar, who plans to join the Mayflowerexpedition. Asking Beazley for advice, she tells her that Becky must go with Gardenar, and battles and temporarily defeats the presence in Biddy. Biddy begs Richard to take Becky with him, and he agrees, but not before getting Biddy pregnant.

Their father dies some months later, and Biddy moves out, prostituting herself to rich men. She gives birth to a daughter, Prue, in Beazley's cottage, and is willed it after she dies, but continues prostituting herself until she can afford a home of her own two decades later. She kills several men who tried to cheat her out of loan repayment via witchcraft. As the English Civil War nears Gosport, she goes to the oak grove, where the voice in her head tells her to send her flesh and blood to an outsider who will arrive. The same day, George Goring, a parliamentarian soldier, arrives and takes command of Portsmouth across the harbour, and Biddy realizes that Becky has died. Biddy sends Prue with Goring, and the two women, spy upon Goring and warn the parliamentary army of his defection to the king.

Goring's occupation of the island is besieged by Gosport and the parliamentary navy, and he eventually surrenders and escapes. Prue returns to Gosport and marries a miller, but six months later, a Royalist militia firebombs the town, killing Biddy as she attempts to put out the fire on her house, Becky's voice warning her beforehand "the Saxon is over the hill". Prue is given the boar pendant found on Biddy's neck.

100 years later, Richard Gardenar, a descendant of Becky Miller, is an American prisoner of war on board an English prison hulk, Royal Oak, in Portsmouth harbour. He catches the attention of Tom Long, a soldier aboard the Royal Oak, who is descended from Prue. When Richard catches a fever, he sees visions of his ancestors, including the original Brigid, and the boar. Tom brings his daughter, Brigid, to heal him by laying on hands, which clears his fever.

Richard Long, Brigid's grandfather, believes Tom's tale that Gardenar is a distant relation, and convinces Tom to rescue Gardenar and his French friend Louis Marchand. Tom prepares materials for the two to escape the hulk, but they barely survive trekking through cold mud and mist, Louis falling into a coma. They are tended in a barn by Brigid and Tom. Gardenar quickly recovers and falls in love with Brigid. Upon seeing Brigid's boar pendant, he produces his own, convincing Brigid they are family. The two exchange their pendants, and influenced by the pendant, Richard becomes impatient to leave even as Louis slowly recovers. Richard experiences the same bad dreams as in his fever, hearing his own voice beckoning Bran into the burning hut, and recalling his rape when he was first imprisoned.

One night Brigid and Gardenar have sex after Louis falls asleep, but Gardenar is overcome by the pendant and begins beating and raping her. Louis awakens and attempts to fight him, but collapses. Brigid stabs him with a pitchfork, and the barn is set aflame in the struggle. The fire and rape are blamed on a gang of escaped land prisoners, Louis poses as a distant relation (Lewis Marchant) and marries Brigid, but soon dies of tuberculosis, and she gives birth to Gardenar's child, a girl. Tom Long takes both pendants and locks them in a box.

150 years later during WWII, Bran and Wayland Marchant are middle-aged twin brothers living together. Bran, mild-mannered and impotent, is dominated by Wayland in an incestuous relationship. After their mother's death, they discovered the boar pendant in her effects, Bran taking the newer and Wayland the older. Wayland begins having dreams similar to those of Biddy, and murders several women in what he believes is a Satanic ritual. Bran falls in love with Mavis Weston, an unattractive woman renting out the Marchant's upper room. Their closeness enrages Wayland, but he is blinded and severely injured by a bombing run, losing the pendant, dispelling the dream and mollifying him. However, after Bran announces their intent marry, Wayland rapes and murders Mavis while Bran is at work. Bran shoots Wayland with an antique pistol, and flees to the Oak copse, where Wayland committed his murders. He has a vision of himself as the ancient boar fleeing and fighting Stoc, and ancient Bran burning alive while seeing the face of Waylin. His body is consumed by the copse.

What even is this book? It's marked as a horror novel by several sources, and it is, kind of. There is a cursed pendant leading to horrific deaths for multiple people. But it's also kind of romancey in places, and the overarching structure and concern is the multi-generational family saga, spanning more than a thousand years. It's not nearly as long and detailed as something like Edward Rutherford's Sarum, but a great deal of the "point" is the particularly local historical details. There are multiple maps displaying the growth of Gosport, and from what I could tell just about every location mentioned in the final two parts was real. Even Rowner copse is still around, now surrounded by housing, but the nearby golf club mentioned in part four is still there.

Some of it is clearly made-up: the etymology of Gosport is unknown, but the first map suggests it was the name of one of Breca's tribe who was made headman of the harbour village. "Bury road" is placed over the infant burial ground in part one, which is plausible but not historical, from what I can tell. "Swertings" is a reference to Beowulf, and while inhabitation in the Gosport area is archaeologically known from the Bronze Age (probably easier to name a place in Great Britain where it isn't), it only enters the historical record with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (who annihilate the settlements at the end of part one). Finlay cites that book and The Story of Gosport in the bibliography for part one, but the rest are general books about early British and Viking history. The other three parts of the bibliography all list specific documents related to local history, and events like George Goring's siege in neighbouring Portsmouth, and the Royal Oak's use as a prison hulk, are historical fact.

The parts vary in length, and quality. The first part with the Vikings is the most strongly fantastical, and was an engaging read for its strangeness. The second was the longest, and the worst, at least for me. I'm just not interested in medieval history nearly as much as just about anything else, and the family drama in this part lacks intrigue. It feels entirely grafted onto the historical events, which in part two don't even seem that consequential to the civil war going on. Part three has a great atmosphere on the prison ship, and the escape is exciting and well-rendered, but it ends as quickly as it starts. Part four is the most horrory, gets some real drama, and is hardly malformed by its length, unlike parts two and three. Descriptions of place were consistently evocative, as are the details of life in the various eras. I can appreciate this book's strangeness, but its length and its form are at war with each other.

Of course, there is an overarching story connecting all of them, the pendant and the malign presence it is connected to. Honestly, I could barely understand this, and let out an audible "what the fuck" upon getting to the end. All I can do is try and lay out the pieces. Stoc kills a boar, and turns its singular tusk into a pendant. The boar was explicitly a normal boar that became abnormally aggressive after a brain injury, but is clearly connected to the presence within the pendant. The red eyes Biddy sees within her dream are those of the boar, the American Richard Gardenar sees Waylin within the boar in his dreams, and the rapacious rage state he and Wayland enter is linked to the boar's anger. But the presence is also explicitly the spirit of Waylin. Bran hears and converses with the voice of Waylin, and Waylin seems, if not entire friendly, at least not implacably hostile. He helps Stoc's tribe several times. His too-late warning to Bran is ambiguous. Was it to enhance his suffering, or was he unable to warn him earlier? His luring of Bran to his death seems malevolent, but the battle was already lost by that point, and the vision of Brigid soothed him. There is nothing obviously of the boar in him. Biddy sees an apparition of Waylin, and hears his voice, but he is more diffuse, and while she fears he will eventually make her hurt Becky, it never actually happens. In the last two parts, there is no clear voice, and Waylin seems entirely consumed by the boar, except for modern Bran hearing Waylin's original warning. And when that Bran dies, he sees himself as the boar, and gazes upon the face of the original Waylin.

The birth of Stoc's children, Stoc's near-death, and the boar's death all occur at nearly the same time, so it could be that there is a magical linkage there. The connection of the pendant is strange, because I'm not sure that the original Bran ever actually touched it. It was worn by his mother, and taken by Brigid, pregnant with his child, but he in particular had no connection to it. It's clear that Waylin wants to possess Bran for his own, and is enraged when he finds connection with another outside himself, literalized in the Bran/Wayland relationship. The pattern of the cursed twins is that one dies early, and the other finds a connection with the pendant, but comes to death by fire. The boar wanted to kill Stoc, and Waylin wants to have his twin for his own. Maybe Waylin's spirit resented the continuance of Bran's line in Brigid, and if he could not have Bran, he would have his descendants? His path forward would be joining himself to the pendant carried by her descendants, but the boar was also part of it. Then as time passed, the implacable hatred of the boar came more and more to dominate their being, and his desire to own his other half was always overpowered by the boar's urge to end Stoc's line. The curse is ended with the deaths of Wayland and Bran, Bran now also part of the boar, and reunited with the spirit of Waylin. Their end also reverses the pattern of the curse, with the affected twin dying first, and no fire.

I had thought there might be some angle by which Stoc's mother Gulda is behind it all, but it didn't come to anything. Stoc's father mentions that he never understood what exactly she was thinking, and she is the wisewoman/witch of their village, which have real powers as seen in part two. She is the one who tells Stoc that he must sacrifice his son, but she seems to genuinely love her family, helping Moanh give birth several more times, and the sacrifice is validated by the presence of the druid and the end of the plague. It would seem both ineffectual and convoluted to afflict the village with plague to get Stoc to kill his son, then continue helping him.

There is a clear theme of decline. Stoc is the chief of a prosperous village, a warrior and a skilled craftsman, and the incestuous relationship of his children is no shame. The martial spirit is lost, but the artistic skill continues down the line, until by WWII, Bran and Wayland have no artistry, are complete misfits working menial jobs, and their incest is a source of shame and horror.

There's actually a sidequel to this, The Edge of Tomorrow, following Becky and Richard Gardenar on the Mayflower. I can't tell if that one is also a generational saga, or if it has a supernatural element, since the copy of the pendant seems to have no power at any point in this book. I don't really dislike this book, and since my favourite part was the boat and escape in part three, maybe I'd actually like the sidequel a lot more, but it's a solid "maybe sometime".

https://archive.org/details/oncearoun...
https://archive.org/details/edgeoftom...

[Nik Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an unusual book; compelling storytelling at its best, handling a theme that spans centuries. Published as a paperback original in 1978, D.G. Finlay’s magical novel proved doubly fascinating for me as it was not only well-written and evocative, it also featured Gosport in Hampshire, where I lived for many years.

Though labelled as 'general fiction' Finlay is considered to be a horror writer.

There are four parts, each about a different period, all set in and around Gosport, each prefaced with a relevant map.

The first concerns about thirty Scandinavian conquerors who settle by the Solent around early 400s AD. Their chieftain was ‘a hard man, but weary of the restless years behind him.’ Though they found peace and rich land to till, there was the occasional conflict, notably with the Meonwara (present-day Meon Valley, I guess).

Young virile Stoc became the new chieftain in 480. Throughout the writing is never less than eloquent, with good imagery, for example at the chieftain’s funeral pyre: ‘The call to Woden died in the throats of the men and they listened, the hair rising on their skin and the blood standing cold in their bodies.’ (p18) And: ‘When the sun crept out of the mantle of morning mist, there remained only the funeral guards, still as stone in their trance-like vigil over the little hill with its crown of smoking, sweet-smelling ash.’ (p19) Stock took to wife Moanh who gave him much pleasure and two sons: ‘The joy of lying with Moanh and basking in the warmth and strength of hr response to him filled his waking thoughts.’ (p21)

One day Stoc joined the hunt of a wounded wild boar which finally put up a tremendous fight, killing one of the hunters. Stoc took a tusk from the dead boar and carved an pendant resembling two boars and presented it to his wife.

The pendant seems to possess a dark power which subsequently affects the two sons… Brigid weds Bran, one of the boys, so the genes will be passed on…Ultimately, tragedy stalks them, and the pendant survives…

The second part is set in the time of the English Civil War. Polycarpus Miller and his wife Elizabeth had twin daughters, Becky and Biddy, and on their tenth birthday they were presented with a pendant each, one a copy of the original. Becky owned the original and sensed its fell influence on her… And Biddy’s beautiful daughter Prue becomes involved in spying on the governor of neighbouring Portsmouth, for he was loyal to the king while Gosport was allied with Cromwell. When villagers suspect Becky of witchcraft, she is sent abroad to America with her beau Richard Gardenar (in readiness for the sequel, The Edge of Tomorrow, 1979).

The third part takes place in 1783 when American and French prisoners are being held in floating hulks in Portsmouth Harbour. The conditions in the hulks are grim. One of those incarcerated on the vessel Royal Oak is Richard Gardenar. Tom Long works on Gardenar’s hulk and recognises the likeness of their ancestor from a portrait of the 1600s. He determines to arrange for an escape… The night trek across the mudflats is tense and well told. Daughter Brigid wears the handed-down boar pendant and coincidentally the rescued Richard possesses the other, passed on from Becky…

The fourth part is set during the Second World War. Two elderly brothers, Bran and Wayland, live together. This is a particularly dark episode. Wayland is not a pleasant man, a follower of the satanist Aleister Crowley. The area is suffering from frequent rape-murders of local women. Wayland is jealous of Bran’s attachment Mavis. And they both possess the pendant heirlooms… for a final reckoning…

D. G. Finlay set herself a mammoth task and has done a great deal of research and supplies two pages of reference works. She manages to evoke each time period and cleverly names of characters are reinvented for later generations.

The local references are many: the sinking of Henry VIII’s ship the Mary Rose; Titchfield; Privett Farm; St Mary’s Church, Stoke; Fareham; Southsea Castle; Peel Common; Stokes Bay; the Five Alls pub; Spring Garden Lane; Grove Road; the Queen Charlotte pub; HMS St Vincent, a training brick ship, my first draft in the RN; Brickwood’s Best Bitter; the Gosport War Memorial Hospital; ‘the Asylum out in the country near Wickham’ – presumably Netley, which is now a newish housing complex.

A thought-provoking read with, be warned, a down-beat ending.

[Veronica-Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good sweeping saga down through the generations with an evil talisman as the link that ties them all. I loved reading about all the families and the effects of a supernatural charm that each of them has to fight against or become one with. Highly recommended.

[A gin and orange, a lemon squash, and a scotch and water, please!]

I'm not rating this yet because I last read this far too long ago. So long, in fact, that I'd almost forgotten about it and assumed it was out of print.
But some books get into your soul, don't they? And this is one of them. I remember I really enjoyed it and I remember glimpses from it, like fragments from a dream. So I'm left with the fallout from the dream and a feeling that I have to read it again very soon.