Characters

Duc Théodore de Cornsai-Tantobé

Nobleman, scholar, ex-soldier and widower. He owns an ancestral château in the Languedoc region of France and an old manor-house in North Yorkshire, England. He is an adept in the “Right-hand Path,” the study of occult knowledge to do good. For many years to some extent he has been trapped in his past. The adventure he undertakes will prove to be a life-changing experience...

Jean Le Taureau

Ex-Legionnaire, murderer and loyal chauffeur to the Duc, Jean has an “anger-management problem”...

Hatch Beauchamp

Astro-physicist, “Nam” veteran and ex-boxer, the hulking, ruggedly handsome native of New Orleans is a dear friend of the Duc and companion in the Quest.

Alexandrov Slivovitch Romanov

Related to Russia's last Czar, this gifted bio-chemist has defected to the west after the callous indifference of the Soviet régime to his fate. Maimed while heroically rescuing shipwrecked comrades, he is nevertheless a potent ally of the Duc.

Marie Laverge

A beautiful French medical researcher who haunts Hatch's thoughts after a brief encounter. She will re-enter his life in the course of the tale...

Anne Laverge

Marie's beautiful mother, a history teacher who has innocently embarked on research of Skerne and his Talisman. She will become intertwined with the Duc and his quest...

Gaspard Mochet

(Aka Jacques Frelon – the pseudonym he uses to ensnare Stanley and Fr. O'Hegarty) - the mephitic villain of the piece. An adept in the “Left-hand Path” - Satanism – his overriding drive is for power and domination...

Stanley Crook

A young man whose hobby is devising board games. He is sexton of a small Catholic church in the north-east of England, and co-guardian of the Talisman and scrolls. He is also sadly afflicted by a severe stammer.

Fr. Donal O'Hegarty

Once a priest of great talent and promise, whose career was blighted by an unfortunate phobia of most creatures encountered in the British countryside. At the start of the tale, he is in the latter part of his ministry, and co-guardian with Stanley of the evil relics.

Canon Arnold Geldhard

The forbidding Vicar-General who “deals” with Stanley and Fr. O'Hegarty after the theft of the relics.

Cardinal Padraig-Finbar O'Flaherty-Ahearn

Cardinal of Dublin at the time of the Talisman's disappearance. It is he who commissions his old acquaintance, the Duc, to find and recover the stolen artefacts.

Cheryl

Barmaid at The Golden Cock and the object of Stanley's desire.

Flora McFlintloch

A native of Scotland, she is the Duc's homely housekeeper in Yorkshire.

Betty

Barmaid of The Dingleberry Arms and willing recipient of Jean Le Taureau's affections...

Julien Latapette

Mochet's hapless catamite. Abandoned by his father, he was left to survive on the streets of Marseilles until he fell into Mochet's orbit and the path to an even worse fate...

Mathilde Lasage

The Duc's French housekeeper, she is also his confidante, guide and surrogate mother, an oasis of wisdom in a sand storm of troubles...

Joachim Laverge

A professional holticulturalist, he is Marie's father and Anne's ex-husband. Overly-fond of pastis, he is nevertheless of use to the Duc.

Didier Benitier

The Duc's local Curé who is also Mathilde's cousin and the Duc's confessor. Like Jean le Taureau, he also has an “anger-management problem”, but a wholly different, highly individual means of dealing with his rages... there's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium and nickel, neodymium, ruthenium, uranium and iron, americium, neptunium, germanium and gold and proactinium, lutetium, vanadium, europium, zirconium, astatine and radium, lanthanum and osmium and indium and gallium...