Elnor

Elnor is the vengeful sixteenth-century nun whose presence overtakes Alice Pagett during the catastrophe at the Banfield shrine. The narrative presents her as both a revenant and a force sustained by the living: through Alice she claims a nearly completed service, confronts those she holds responsible for her past, and turns the sacred gathering into an instrument of vengeance. Her final defeat comes when the oak at the shrine burns and falls, while the precise nature of her return remains uncertain.

Identity and Historical Traces

Elnor is connected to a nun from the sixteenth century, whose history reaches the present through Thomas Woolgar’s chronicle and the events beneath the shrine oak. At the climax, Alice is described as being Elnor, and the figure speaking through her identifies Alice as being between the present world and the underworld. The account therefore does not treat Elnor as simply an apparition witnessed at a distance: her presence is bound to Alice’s body and to the fate of the living girl.

The old chronicle also names a novice, Rosemund, who was associated with Elnor and cast out from the church. After Elnor addresses Molly Pagett as Rosemund, Fenn considers whether Molly might descend from that novice. He cannot settle the possibility, and he also allows that Elnor’s hatred may have confused her identification. This uncertainty matters: the scene offers a possible historical link between the women, but does not confirm a family connection or explain exactly how Elnor returned.

Presence Within Alice and Power Over the Living

During the shrine’s collapse, Elnor tells Molly that Alice’s service to her is nearly complete and that no one can save either of them. The speech makes Alice’s peril part of Elnor’s design, even as Elnor describes the girl as suspended between life and the underworld. Molly’s appeal and approach do not release Alice from that condition; instead, Elnor laughs as Molly moves toward her daughter. The intimate mother-and-child bond is thus caught inside a conflict whose terms Elnor controls, at least for a time.

Fenn experiences that control as an inability to act or look away. In his mind, voices urge resistance and explain that Elnor’s strength is accumulated from the people present, drawn from their evil and set against the positive. The force is not wholly independent: it can exist only through the living, and the voices insist that it cannot govern those who oppose it. Fenn struggles to resist, but the pressure overwhelms his will. The scene gives Elnor formidable influence without making her unlimited; her dependence on human participation also defines the possibility of resisting her.

The Oak, Vengeance, and Defeat

Elnor’s appearance shifts between the young woman Fenn finds compelling and a damaged, distorted figure associated with the misshapen oak. The contrast makes her influence difficult to separate from the horror it conceals: Fenn is first drawn into her gaze, then recoils as the face and body before him change. She declares her vengeance and advances on him while the earth opens toward the shrine. Her changing form links the apparent attraction of her power to the ruinous history it carries.

The oak becomes the decisive counterforce. Lightning strikes it, revealing that its interior is rotten and occupied by creatures feeding on dead matter; then the tree bursts into flame. As it begins to fall, Elnor retreats from it, cries out, and reaches toward the shattered tree. Sue and Ben pull Fenn from the platform before the burning structure collapses. Fenn believes that the falling oak crushes and destroys Elnor’s manifestation. The shrine burns, the tremors stop, and the catastrophe’s central supernatural threat ends with the tree’s destruction.

Aftermath and Unresolved Meaning

Afterward, Fenn revisits Elnor’s possible connection to Rosemund but concludes that no clear answer is available. Nor can he establish whether the ancient hatred has returned as reincarnation or whether the entity has confused its own past. The account preserves these alternatives rather than resolving Elnor into a fully explained supernatural identity.

The excavation of the shrine site a week later produces the remains of a small person beneath the fallen oak’s roots. The remains are centuries old and show signs of having been burned; experts are to determine their origin before they are eventually taken to the British Museum. Their location and age invite a connection with Elnor, but the account does not explicitly identify them as hers. Elnor’s story consequently ends in both destruction and uncertainty: her manifestation is stopped, while the material evidence beneath the oak leaves the history behind it open to investigation.