'St Michael and All Angels' Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Fleece

Will Oakley bought the inn from Job Wainwright; a story from Job's ownership of the inn can be found in the book 'Hester Roon'. (These two stories overlap slightly - see the Interesting Info on Q8, below). By the time our story starts Will had been the Landlord for four years, and he was just enjoying the fact that he had repaid all the money he had borrowed to buy 'The Fleece' in the first place.

Answer: she was badly pocked from smallpox

Her disfigurement left Harriet embittered with life and prone to spite towards people who were pretty. Even Effie, who had very little going for her in the way of looks, earned Harriet's envy, for her skin was beautiful and clear even if her features were not attractive. For many years Harriet had been trying different cosmetics and cures, to no avail, and would paint a thick paste onto her face every morning, to face the world.

Answer: he was a doctor

Jonathan knew Will from twenty years before, when Will was called Mike Latter, and was the doctor on board the 'Ethiopian Queen'. Through a series of misadventures, Will had killed the captain, and the two men ended up in a life raft with a third man, Peter Dunn, who died. Taking that man's fortune, they split up; Jonathan was held as a captive slave in North Africa while Will returned to England. Thirsting for revenge as his money had been taken, he came looking for Will when he was released in order to extract monetary revenge for having been a slave for twenty years.

Answer: they were brother and sister

While Will distrusted Dick, although he could never pin-point the reason why, he knew instinctively that he could trust his life to Effie. They had come to 'The Fleece' from the orphanage in Job's time, and were as ill-treated as all working children of the times. Described in detail, Effie comes across as an unattractive girl who was ignored by everyone but content with her lot in life; she worshipped God and loved Will Oakely because he occasionally noticed her and inquired over her well-being.

Answer: Roger Moreton

Georges Nargyerat was part of a network to release Napoleon from exile, and by sweet-talking Harriet, he was to take Will's horse that night. Dick was involved with highwaymen and used that horse on a regular basis. Because the horse was not in the stable, Dick was unable to go anywhere that night, and so was available when Myrtle needed assistance because her lover, Roger Moreton (the young rake from the local aristocracy) did not want to take 'no' for an answer.

Answer: Dick's involvement with highwaymen

Effie was a deeply religious girl, and the lies she had been forced into was going a long way to destroying the serenity of her soul. Constantly praying that her involvement in Sarah's pregnancy would not be forced to the conclusion Sarah demanded of her, she looked to Will as a way out, but the presence of Smail that evening seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

There was something evil in the man's eyes that terrified her far more than Sarah's demands that she kill the baby the moment it was born.

Answer: £300 a year

Even though Will told him that that represented the total annual profit of 'The Fleece', Smail was determined that Will owed him. Given that the money left by Peter Dunn, amounted to £1,000 (£500 each), it seemed that Smail wanted far more than he had lost when he was captured. Will would have accepted the monetary blackmail, but drew the line at Smail's suggestion that he hand over one of his beloved daughters to this man.

Answer: with her sister Myrtle

The only spare bed was in a room with a male guest, and Smail had demanded a room of his own with a lockable door and fire. The Blue Room was the room Harriet asked her father to let her have after the events of that night, and as far as the story goes, we know of no intention of ever having anyone sleep in the Parlour.

It was Myrtle who ventured into the attic room with blankets to make things a little more comfortable for a couple of vagrants who were spending the night, and it was while she was putting the blankets in the sorry, long-neglected, thought-haunted room that she found the considerable hidden cache of money left in the rotten mattress by Hester Roon's mother fifty years before.

Answer: she tried to kill herself

As Julia is travelling towards 'The Fleece' we learn of her history. Giving a lift to an elderly Preacher, Julia realises with horror that he played a significant part in her life. They had worked together briefly with some vagrant, ill-used children and she had lost her own son soon afterwards. That she blamed the incident on the death of her son is the only possibility we are given for the cause of his death, so we cannot take this as significant evidence. Highly disturbed, Julia resolved to kill herself in an anonymous inn.

The crying of the newly-born baby drew her out of her self-induced coma and Will was able to save her (he was a Doctor in his past life). She was later to take Sarah's baby with her; she wanted to give Effie a new job as well, but Effie did not want to leave Will, even though she knew there would never be a chance of anything more than an employer/employee relationship.

Answer: Harriet Oakley

Harriet had a cache of once-tried and then hidden potions and ointments for her face, gathered over the years, and never thrown away. As she is clearing out her room for Smail to occupy it, we learn the history of one of these in particular. This was sold to her by a local 'wise woman' with the warning that the solution should not go too close to her mouth as it was poison.

She put this into a decanter of wine and gave it to Smail to drink under the pretence of drinking to their future together as man and wife.

After being forced to drink some of it herself, she was later violently sick and survived; her father, seeing the tell-tale makeup on both glasses in Smail's room, guessed what had happened and together they arranged that the local doctor would put the death down to bad oysters.