Toward the end of last year I acquired additional bookcases and therefore had the shelf space to unbox some older favourites. It was fun and eye-opening to sort through hoards of books I had devoured in younger years. Tucked among them were some more recent, unread finds: gothics collected for no other reason than my having enjoyed this genre as a teenager. Smiling at the signature cover art (night, young woman in forefront, a brooding castle in the distance) I dipped into a book by Victoria Holt, amused by the awkward, unfinished writing style. Three hours later, I realised I was halfway through On The Night Of The Seventh Moon and thoroughly entertained.
1859. Honouring the memory of her German mother, English-born Helena Trant attends a Damenstift (convent school) in the Black Forest. The legend-rich woods hold a deep fascination for Helena. When a creeping autumn mist separates her from her companions at a forest picnic her predicament brightens into a fairytale adventure through her rescue, as evening darkens, by a mysterious stranger on a white horse.
Unable to forget him, she is thrilled when their paths cross again during the festival of The Seventh Moon. The reunion leads to the revelation that he is Maximilian, Count Lokenberg - and to a secret marriage. A few days into the honeymoon Maximilian is suddenly called away. The morning after, Helena wakes up in the home of friends, feeling sick. She is told that her memories of the Count are hallucinations; that she was raped by an unknown assailant and has remained bedridden with shock since the night of the Seventh Moon. When she insists on driving out to the forest lodge where she believes she and the Count had been so happy, nothing but ruins greet her. And that is only the beginning of the nightmare.
Holt’s storytelling runs smoothly: her breathless prose combines with a gallery of ambiguous characters and an intricate plot to produce a fast-paced, gripping gothic. The plot of On The Night Of The Seventh Moon is closely allied with the waning of independent German principalities and duchies and the period of unification in the lead-up to the Franco-Prussian War. The political background emerges gradually and gives structure to a story that not only spans a decade but breaks with current romance convention in its prolonged separation of the hero and heroine. The latter allows for plenty of the kind of mystery and intrigue that are hallmarks of the gothic romance that had its heyday in the 1960s and early seventies (a genre of which Victoria Holt was one of the reigning queens). Helena Trant starts out as a cheerful innocent but grows into a woman who, while never letting go of hope, works to make the best of a bad situation. From the beginning, hers is a fairytale with sinister undertones, and the foreboding atmosphere is readily sustained by being told in the first person, single point of view favoured by gothic writers. While at one stage I did begin to wonder if the character I assumed to be the hero would ever return, the suspense inherent in having to puzzle out the motives and intentions of the heroine’s surroundings was one of the most absorbing aspects of the novel.
Liechtenkinn, Klocksburg, Klarenbock, and Rochenstein are imaginary places, but Holt draws on the real-life history, customs, legends, and geography of the Black Forest region for flavour, and the settings she presents are full of interest. The festival that incites the story appears made up, however.
Eleanor Hibbert was never one of my favourite authors in any of her incarnations. As a teenager I deemed the world she created as Victoria Holt grim and depressing. My intense dislike of the ‘hero’ in Menfreya In The Morning finally caused me to shun her books entirely. On The Night Of The Seventh Moon has inspired me to give her a second chance. Beyond that, the book proves that I still have a soft spot for old-fashioned gothic romance.
(Fontana Books paperback, 1974, page 44-5):
“So that was how we came to be standing in the square with the revellers all about us. It was about eight o’clock in the evening. Overhead hung the great moon – the seventh moon of the year and there seemed to be something mystical about it. It was a strange scene; naphtha flares burned from iron jets lighting the faces of the people. There were crowds in the square; people were signing and calling to each other. I caught sight of a man masked, with the horned head-dress which Ilse had described, and I recognized it at once from pictures my mother had shown me. Then I saw another and another.
Ilse squeezed my hand. ‘What do you think of it?’
‘Wonderful,’ I said.
‘Keep close. The crowd’s thickening and they may become over-excited.’
‘It’s early yet,’ I told her.
I saw a girl seized by one of the horn-headed men and go dancing off with him.
‘The excitement grows. You’ll see.’
‘What happens if the sky is overcast and there’s no moon?’
‘Some say that Loke is sulking and won’t come out, others that he’s playing one of his mischievous tricks and then one has to be especially careful.’
A group of fiddlers arrived, started to play and the dancing began.
I don’t know quite how it happened; it was the way these things do happen in crowds, I supposed. One minute I was standing there by Ilse’s side watching the laughing and dancing swirl of people and the next there was chaos.”
