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The Covenant
The death of Jessica Mortimer's husband of five years has plunged her into such intense grief that she is unable to pick up the threads of her life. This has been conveyed by her mother in one of her regular letters to Lady Eleanor and Sir Matthew Rensby in England, by whom Jessica's parents were employed until the tragic and mysterious disappearance of Jessica's sister Jane when Jessica was nine years old.
Suggesting that a change of surrounding might help Jessica, Lady Rensby offers her a job; that of helping Sir Matthew organize the family archives. Jessica accepts, not realizing until she arrives at the Rensby estate how much power some of her long-forgotten memories would still have over her.
There is much else she finds unsettling: Sir Matthew and Lady Eleanor are alternately over-solicitous or strangely cold and remote, and their nineteen-year-old daughter is openly hostile. While the family awaits the imminent arrival of the Rensby heir, Peter, to celebrate his 21st birthday, Jessica hears voices and sees phantoms that make her doubt her sanity.
The Covenant is contemporary gothic horror at its unusual and original best.
Suggesting that a change of surrounding might help Jessica, Lady Rensby offers her a job; that of helping Sir Matthew organize the family archives. Jessica accepts, not realizing until she arrives at the Rensby estate how much power some of her long-forgotten memories would still have over her.
There is much else she finds unsettling: Sir Matthew and Lady Eleanor are alternately over-solicitous or strangely cold and remote, and their nineteen-year-old daughter is openly hostile. While the family awaits the imminent arrival of the Rensby heir, Peter, to celebrate his 21st birthday, Jessica hears voices and sees phantoms that make her doubt her sanity.
The Covenant is contemporary gothic horror at its unusual and original best.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
94 people want to read
About the author
Pauline Gedge
47 books490 followersI was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on December 11, 1945, the first of three girls. Six years later my family emigrated to England where my father, an ex-policeman, wanted to study for the Anglican ministry. We lived in an ancient and very dilapidated cottage in the heart of the English Buckinghamshire woodland, and later in a small village in Oxfordshire called Great Haseley. I grew up surrounded by countryside that I observed, played in, and grew to know and love passionately, and I wrote lyrically of its many moods.
My father had his first parish in Oxford, so in 1956, having passed the eleven-plus exam, a torture now fortunately defunct, I attended what was then the Oxford Central School for Girls. I was a very good student in everything but mathematics. Any academic discipline that is expressed and interpreted through words I could conquer, but math was bewildering and foreign, a maze of numbers and ridiculous symbols with which I had nothing in common. I liked chemistry, because I was allowed to play with pretty crystals and chemicals that behaved as if they had magic in them. I studied the violin, an instrument I struggled over and gave up after two years, and the piano, which I enjoyed and continue to play, along with the recorders. Music has always been important to me.
Then in 1959 my father accepted a parish in Virden, Manitoba, and the family left for Canada. After three months at the local high school, I was sent to a boarding school in Saskatchewan. It was the most dehumanizing, miserable experience of my life. In 1961 I began one inglorious year at the University of Manitoba’s Brandon College. I did not work very hard, and just before final exams I was told that my sister Anne was dying. I lost all interest in passing.
Anne wanted to die in the country where she was born, so we all returned to New Zealand. She died a month after our arrival, and is buried in Auckland. The rest of us moved down to the tip of the South Island where my father had taken the parish of Riverton. For a year I worked as a substitute teacher in three rural schools. In ’64 I attended the Teachers’ Training College in Dunedin, South Island, where my writing output became prolific but again my studies suffered. I did not particularly want to be a teacher. All I wanted to do was stay home and read and write. I was eighteen, bored and restless. I met my first husband there.
In 1966 I married and returned to Canada, this time to Alberta, with my husband and my family. I found work at a day care in Edmonton. My husband and I returned to England the next year, and my first son, Simon, was born there in January ’68. In 1969 we came back to Edmonton, and my second son was born there in December 1970.
By 1972 I was divorced, and I moved east of Edmonton to the village of Edgerton. I wrote my first novel and entered it in the Alberta Search-for-a-New-Novelist Competition. It took fourth place out of ninety-eight entries, and though it received no prize, the comments from the judges and my family encouraged me to try again. The next year I entered my second attempt, a bad novel that sank out of sight. Finally in 1975 I wrote and submitted Child of the Morning, the story of Hatshepsut, an 18th Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh, which won the competition. With it came a publishing deal with Macmillan of Canada and the rest, as they say, is history.
My father had his first parish in Oxford, so in 1956, having passed the eleven-plus exam, a torture now fortunately defunct, I attended what was then the Oxford Central School for Girls. I was a very good student in everything but mathematics. Any academic discipline that is expressed and interpreted through words I could conquer, but math was bewildering and foreign, a maze of numbers and ridiculous symbols with which I had nothing in common. I liked chemistry, because I was allowed to play with pretty crystals and chemicals that behaved as if they had magic in them. I studied the violin, an instrument I struggled over and gave up after two years, and the piano, which I enjoyed and continue to play, along with the recorders. Music has always been important to me.
Then in 1959 my father accepted a parish in Virden, Manitoba, and the family left for Canada. After three months at the local high school, I was sent to a boarding school in Saskatchewan. It was the most dehumanizing, miserable experience of my life. In 1961 I began one inglorious year at the University of Manitoba’s Brandon College. I did not work very hard, and just before final exams I was told that my sister Anne was dying. I lost all interest in passing.
Anne wanted to die in the country where she was born, so we all returned to New Zealand. She died a month after our arrival, and is buried in Auckland. The rest of us moved down to the tip of the South Island where my father had taken the parish of Riverton. For a year I worked as a substitute teacher in three rural schools. In ’64 I attended the Teachers’ Training College in Dunedin, South Island, where my writing output became prolific but again my studies suffered. I did not particularly want to be a teacher. All I wanted to do was stay home and read and write. I was eighteen, bored and restless. I met my first husband there.
In 1966 I married and returned to Canada, this time to Alberta, with my husband and my family. I found work at a day care in Edmonton. My husband and I returned to England the next year, and my first son, Simon, was born there in January ’68. In 1969 we came back to Edmonton, and my second son was born there in December 1970.
By 1972 I was divorced, and I moved east of Edmonton to the village of Edgerton. I wrote my first novel and entered it in the Alberta Search-for-a-New-Novelist Competition. It took fourth place out of ninety-eight entries, and though it received no prize, the comments from the judges and my family encouraged me to try again. The next year I entered my second attempt, a bad novel that sank out of sight. Finally in 1975 I wrote and submitted Child of the Morning, the story of Hatshepsut, an 18th Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh, which won the competition. With it came a publishing deal with Macmillan of Canada and the rest, as they say, is history.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 6, 2017
It's not bad. And I think I hold Gedge to a very high standard. In this little book, which has a great ending, I found myself not really caring for any of the characters, which was a huge problem for me.
February 19, 2019
An early novel.
June 24, 2019
I don't like horror stories, usually, but can still appreciate them if well written... and I found this one I just could not like the characters. Jessica's behaviour lacked logic.
May 27, 2020
Very dark book. Not my favorite genre, but it was well written.
February 24, 2013
Pauline Gedge must have breathed a sigh of relief when she sat down to write this gothic thriller. After several meticulously researched books on ancient Egypt and Celtic Britain - this must have felt like a lark.
It was an enjoyable brainless romp complete with crumbling English manor hall, old unsolved disappearances of children, ghostly hauntings and ancient evil family secrets.
It was an enjoyable brainless romp complete with crumbling English manor hall, old unsolved disappearances of children, ghostly hauntings and ancient evil family secrets.
April 6, 2016
Pauline Gedge is a wonderful writer, this book is a departure from her specialty of Ancient Egyptian Historical novels, and for me it was a difficult read.
Where I loved her Stargate(no relation to the TV series),this was hard to get through.
I felt it was confusing in the middle and at the end.
Where I loved her Stargate(no relation to the TV series),this was hard to get through.
I felt it was confusing in the middle and at the end.
April 4, 2015
I had read some of this author's writing based in Egypt, and enjoyed them. This is very different. Very dark. Well written, but I don't normally read this type of literature.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews