Prologue to Chronicle on Susan Pevensie : Chiefly on Fan Fiction

I'm not sure if you know what fan fiction is.

It does not mean I write a novel entirely of my own, with all characters entirely of my own and take credit for that.

It doesn't mean I take someone else's novel and someone else's characters and change names and other items of exact wording and take credit for that (that's called plagairism).

It means I take the characters from someone else's novel and put them in a new novel or short story. I give them credit for original novels and take credit for my own imagination on what the original author(s) left undescribed.

As I said them, plural, not him, singular, this is actually fan fic on more authors' work than just C. S. Lewis' Seven Chronicles of Narnia.

As I wanted a girl somewhat more tomboyish than Susan Pevensie, and Lucy was already dead, and even Jill Pole was so, in came George (dare I mention at the end you may even call her Georgina?) from Enid Blyton. As I had Susan Pevensie persecuted by a Rabadash like person at the very first chapter, I felt like giving her a decent husband at the end. And Lost Road by Tolkien, John Ronald, came to mind. And obviously I mixed up Audoin and Alboin while doing so. Meanwhile, as she is a person living in England after seeing Narnia, he's one who has seen Numenor. And the Lombards. And a few more. Both have memories of a world they cannot go to. I'm going to explain (or here am explaining) the mixup with Tolkien giving the two Errols some anonymity by exchanging the names of father and of son in them.

As the presumed authorial voice in nearly all of the seven chronicles (all but the last) is a Digory Kirke, who was child and (I presume) well into his youth when Sherlock Holmes was doing detective work on Baker Street, in comes Doctor Watson. With Holmes and Watson around, I can't keep Father Brown out ....

Some guys have a deep antipathy for the whole concept of fan fic, not to mention fan fic crossing over between different authors' different universes. While bad stuff exist, good stuff also exists and on Narnia, mine is not the most noble, but perhaps the most exhaustive. Susan fics (that is fan fictions about Susan Pevensie, notably after the Last Battle) are hard to find but seem to have been very prolific once, and they are difficult to do well. I think my attempt may be the best one of those still available, because I do try to tie together so many loose ends, but there are other fields of Narnian fan fic and some have done better than I there. In Narnia, not in England, as I am doing. The best type, of those I have seen, are set between most chapters of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy. Or some even introduce Swanwhite.

If you are longing for something set in Narnia, don't waste your time on this one right now, Aslan had told Susan she would never return to Narnia. A Susan fic is per definition, nearly, set outside Narnia.

My Susan fic was provoked by Neil Gaiman's (more or less acknowledged) such. Even before I read it, because I had heard of it and of its faults. Not as if I took up the pen (or keyboard) same second, I'm not Reepicheep, but inspiration came not very much later.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Timothy of Ephesus
24.I.2019

PS, plagairism is of course meant to be plagiarism./HGL

Now, if you are not already there, go to chapter 1:

Susan has a bad fright.
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2011/12/susan-has-bad-fright.html

Tea yes, Tilak no

Father Brown was asked by the two Whites what he would be saying to a Hindoo Brahmin. As he had been in India, he answered he had accepted a cup of tea after refusing a tilak. As they were curious, Father Brown told this story of his conversation in the Brahmin's house with his host:

I was lost one evening in a town of India. There were people there in cassock, I thought they were Catholic priests. There was a Brahmin talking with them. I went there and talked to them too. Not long after starting I found out they were really of the so called Liberal Catholic Church. A syncretistic sect, say Spiritists with a Catholic style ritual. I disagreed with them. The Brahmin invited me to his home and I thought I might as well accept. When we arrived home, his wife wanted to give me a kind of mark on the forehead. A tilak they call it. I refused. I was still let in, with friendliest welcome, I enjoyed a wonderful meal with them, and then we drank tea. And the Brahmin asked me:

"Do you believe that all traditions are one?"

"In what manner?" I said.

"Every tradition will tell you, you must not kill."

"Mine tells me I must not kill a man. With a cow it is different."

The Brahmin refrained from contradicting me and went on:

"Every tradition will tell you, you must not steal. If you steal your next life is bad."

"Mine tells me a thief won Paradise when he was executed next to God. His next and eternal life is good."

"God executed as a thief? Do you seriously believe that?"

"Yes" I replied solemnly.

The Brahmin sat silently for quite a while. After some time I could bear it no longer and sipped some tea. When I put down the cup he continued:

"At least every tradition will tell you - excepting the worthless Muslim one - that gods have walked as men among us."

"I agree with half of your tradition by saying the true God walked as a man among us. I agree with half of the Muslim one by saying he was not one god among many others, there is one God. I disagree with both in saying He was made Man only once. And remains so eternally. And that God is One God in Three Persons."

"As in Creator, Upkeeper and Destroyer of every Universe, you mean?"

"No, God would have been Three Persons even if He had never created. But being Three Persons He was Eternal Love and of Love chose to Create. Of Love also he choose to Redeem, that is why He became Man and died on a Cross."

"And what do you think of our tradition?"

"In several aspects it is tainted with error by the Devil."

"Him you call the Destroyer?"

"Yes, we call Him the Destroyer and believe the Apollo of the Greeks and your Shiva is a mask of him and one under which he is not very much disguised."

"Is that why you refused the tilak earlier when we met?"

"That is why I will always refuse the tilak."

"If this is so, why are there traditions that are not Christian? Why are there Jews and Pagans, why are there Muslims? Do you call Protestants Christians?"

"Which ones of them? Salvation Army or Dean Inge? Pusey or Sankey and Moody?" - I decided to answer the Protestant question first.

"No doubt you have a reason for making these distinctions, like some of them being more or less Christian."

"Indeed: the Salvation Army takes most the main facts about our Salvation seriously. Dean Inge calls most of them a fable. Pusey took much of what the Church teaches as valid about how we get saved. Sankey and Moody have their own idea about it."

"And you consider Salvation Army more Christian than Dean Inge and Pusey more Christian than Sankey and Moody?"

"When God became Man, He made a Church with authority to teach all nations, not excepting the English one for other Churches."

"And the Jews?"

"They are the splinter of a people prepared to receive Christ, but refusing to do so themselves."

"And Muslims?"

"Are to Jews and Christians as Protestants or Mormons to us or Jainis and Buddhists to you."

"And Pagans?"

"They had refused the old teaching that the Hebrews kept."

"Hebrews and Jews is the same?"

"Jews are a tribe of the Hebrews, the one most directly concerned with rejecting Christ."

"Who were the first disciples?"

"Jews and more so Galileans. And Galileans were a kind of Jews."

"And if I were to say it is Pagans who kept and Hebrews who rejected the Old Tradition?"

"I would answer Pagans disagree among themselves. Hindoos and Indians of America do not agree, nor do Shintoists and Confucians. Nor are they at one with Parsees or with those Pagans who became Christians."

"But if I were to say the disagreements are to get the vulgar off the track, there is agreement among the traditions of the wise!"

"Galileans were vulgar Jews. God was crucified among vulgar thieves. And there is one more thing."

"Which is?"

"By appealing to secret tradition, you make yourself unable to verify where the traditions agree and not. Two traditions may disagree nearly completely except about their secrecy. Two people from those traditions may say to each other a thing about keeping their traditions secret, and both may conclude very wrongly that they agree about religion, when all they agree about is despising most of those Christ died for."

"Is not loftiness and detachment more important than doctrine?"

"No. That is a hideous spiritual pride, an arrogance of the worst sort."

"Is it not possible to be detached from taking pride in one's knowledge by saying knowledge is not important?"

"Saying knowledge is not important sounds too much like a hideous saying I have heard here in India: victory and defeat are the same. That is a very great blasphemy, if you speak about ultimate such, not just earthly. It detaches one from God who alone can give ultimate victory and attaches one to darkness and ultimate defeat."

"Then why did Krishna say so?"

"Because he was no god but a mistaken man."

"Why do our poets tell us he inspired Arjuna to victory? Why do they tell us he ascended to Heaven after dying?"

"Your poets say the soul was received by the gods high above us, no one to see it with his eyes."

"Do you not believe things no man has seen with his eyes?"

"We do, but on authority of Him whom several eyes saw resurrected after the Crucifixion. It was He who unfolded all the Secrets, not a merely human poet."

"And Ascension? Was not that like Krishna's soul ascending to Heaven?"

"No, the Ascension we believe in was before the eyes of the first Disciples so chosen to witness it."

"It was as a living body He ascended then?"

"As a living body He ascended, as a living body we eat His flesh and drink His blood."

"Let me go, this is too strong for me."

"No, I will not let you go, and it is good for you."

The Brahmin was baptised little later. With his wife and children. And grandchildren.

When Father Brown said these last words, the Whites said: "so will we be!" And Simon thought his son looked happier and saner than ever since he was sent to that horrible school.

Father Brown concluded the story: No longer tending the temple was of course ruin to him in the town, so it was fortunate that Goa, under the Portuguese, was near by. He found work as a translator and teacher of Vedic literature - for students whose purpose was purely literary and linguistic. And perhaps historic too. He once was approached by a Hindoo and refused to even talk to him. Now he is dead, his widow lived in the monastery some time afterwards.

Barrister Popplewell's pleading for Susan Pevensie

Your Honour!

Nobody is denying, least of all my client, that she colluded with the Spivvins family to illegally defend these from policemen legally charged with taking their children away from them. Was it evil? Was it hasty, to the point of mental insanity?

My client may indeed be described as hasty, if you like. But haste is sometimes required. When the lives and freedoms of innocent people are at stake, one cannot without gross dishonour stand by and wait till one has a chance to make everything the legal way.

In a recent war, the Germans learned at a great price that saving lives from a bloody dictator sometimes required illegal action. When it comes to saving British pilots, people who did that faced charges of high treason if caught. RAF honours them. When it comes to saving Jews from terrible suffering and humiliation, possibly death, some who did that and are honoured in Yad Vashem did so by laying aside for a moment the respect for the legal forms of their countries.

I know that the family my client was helping by shooting arrows into some policemen are at a safe place, I have talked to them, it seems very clear that they could at the hands of the Social Assistant in question expect no freedom such as families are used to.

Why? Because the mother was illiterate and the father a headstrong Catholic. Much as we dislike illiteracy, it cannot be an adequate ground for taking children away from a mother. Much as we dislike Jesuit fanaticism - though giving Father Brown of that order his due, they are not all like what we have heard - being a Catholic, however headstrong cannot be a ground for the taking away of children from both parents. Even under the Penal laws, childrehn could only be taken away from a Catholic parent at the behest of an Anglican or Puritan one.

And, one more reason for this lack of secured rights, because the social worker in question - responsible and quiet as she may seem when heard in court - had been among his worst school time harassers. Margaret Cholmondeley, called Cholmondeley Major because of her built, was not acting like a benevolent distributor of gifts in her school days, but she terrorised, with a few others, her comrades. They liked to bully almost everyone weaker than themselves in a school that was closed down some ten years ago, called Experiment House. After leaving that school, she managed to behave herself and gain some confidence. Peter Spivvins - who is also accused along with Susan Pevensie and with his wife and who has managed to keep away - was not among the weakest in the school, but his fiancée, now wife, had been illegally taken away from a residential school for Esquimaux in Canada, and he had no reason to suppose this secret would not be abused if given away to his harrassers or, especially, their parents.

Obviously, in a civilised country, this cannot happen. And as obviously we like to think of England as a civilised country. But sometimes barbarism and dictatorship can nevertheless creep in. An institution that is supposed to be benevolent can become poisoned with a spirit of dictatorship, can become a miniature copy of the recent Nazi and the present Communist dictatorships on the Continent. I wonder whether certain parts of Canada cannot be counted among the dictatorships too. At least when dealing with Esquimaux, with Indians and with French Canadians.

If Sarah Spivvins - also among the accused today, and also keeping away - had been denounced when her now husband was attending Experiment House at the request of an Uncle - she might not ever have had the children for whose welfare Miss Cholmondeley is so concerned. But, what with our relations to Canada, if the children had been taken away, they might have been brought where they also would in their turn risk sterilisation. My clients' coaccused wanted to avoid this at all costs. My client helped them.

My case can be summed up so that my client, was in this case, as earlier when saving a child from forced abortion (I have talked to that family too, the teen mother is now married to a gipsy), acted precisely as the heroes of the recent war did. She should not only be acquitted, but honoured as a hero.

I rest my case.

Applause broke out in the court room. The judge banged the club onto the bar to ask for quiet. He got the jury to retire for deliberation. Five minutes later the jury and the judge were back, and Susan Pevensie was acquitted, along with the absent Peter and Sarah Spivvins, who would have otherwise risked being condemned in contumaciam.

The Idol and the Spell

When Georgina opened her eyes, she was tied hands on back - a situation she knew from earlier years (as you will know if you have read those of Enid Blyton's books where the title starts with "Five ..."). George was - poor guy - swaying back and forth with closed eyes in front of a man who seemed to dominate him. A thin and short man. Behind them there was some kind of broad fire - like fire for barbecues, but with no grate on it and much broader than any barbecue she had seen yet. She realised why the room was hot and she was thirsty.

Behind that there was some idol. Six arms, like the statues of Shiva in India. But unlike those, the head was a vulture's head, and the fingers and toes were rather claws, just as there was a beak on the vulture's head. It was an evil idol. I mean, idols are not exactly good, at least as far as Christianity is concerned, but Roman and Greek ones were usually at least gentle. This one was avid for blood.

"You thought you could rebel, that you could shake off Tash."

"Yes," said George in a very dry and lifeless voice.

What she heard thereafter, she was not able to recall without vomiting, so she has not told word for word. But it included a very abject submission from the poor enchanted George and also a very ugly incantation to someone or something called Tash (more than once called inexorable) by the evil little man. She looked about for something that could comfort her. At her side there was a Roman Catholic priest. But he too seemed under some daze.

Beyond him there was Simon, the father of George.

She got no further in looking about, since what happened before the idol called her attention back to it.

"Show us you are a vulture ..."

George started crying out with shrieks more birdish than human. And not the nicest birds at that. Then he started pecking on the ground, incredibly fast for a human as if guided by the forces of a bird, he picked up an unfortunate frog and swallowed it alive.

"Show us you can kill ..." the small man handed George a knife. A crooked knife like those found in the far off eastern countries. "Kill that girl" he said and pointed at Georgina.

George took the knife and started against his fiancée, the stopped.

"You need to practise a bit first. Pick some more food from the ground."

And George started pecking again, not using his hands except to still hold that crooked knife. He pecked after a very fortunate rat, whe ran away just in time. And he came closer and closer to Georgina.

She was sure he was so much under a spell that he would eventually kill her unless something happened. What could break a spell like that? Well, maybe some Christian confession of the truth. Of Christ's triumph over hell.

"The plowman answered then the priest,
Sir, I believe in Jesus Christ
Who suffered death and harrowed Hell
As I have heard mine elders tell."

As she said those words a few things happened. The evil man went forth to slap her. George, who was still under the spell and acted like a bird somehow found the independence to be a bird who shoved that man (who was occupied with other things than controlling him), and he shoved him so he fell into the fire. And the priest opened his eyes, just in time to hear the agony of the evil man, and see him try to get out of the fire but being pushed back time after time by George, who was using the pecking technique - as vulturish as the spell had made him.

The Exorcism.

"If only I could have my hands free to make a sign of the cross," sighed Father Brown.

"That can be arranged, Father," said Georgina. "Turn your back towards me, I'll turn mine towards you and will untie your hands prettty quickly."

Meanwhile poor George was cackling like a rooster and pecking the ground. He just swooped down on a rat, got it up, bit its neck apart and started chewing ...

Georgina felt so disgusted, so she looked away and hurried up.

Father Brown, once free, stood up and started with a cracked voice, which soon became full and valiant and quarrelsome:

"... get thee out of this creature of God, foul demon, get thee out, Apollo or rather Apollyon, Shiva, Satan, Abaddon or whatever by thy Hellish name ... get thee out, foul Tash or even evolutionary life force, if such be thy hellish name ... of this creature of God, thy Lord against whom thou rebelledest and out of this room and out of the idolatrous image with which thou beguilest the unwary, in the name of the Father + and of the Son + and of the Holy + Ghost!"

He had made a sign of the cross for each of the three Persons as he spoke the Holy Name of the Triune God.

George dropped the rat. He seemed to be coughing. A stench as from a dead cat that had been lying on a hot street for days came out ... then he threw up ... and what came out was a smoke which took form as of a greyish putrid smoke and a shape nearly human except for the vulture head, and for the arms which were six instead of two, with claws instead of fingers. Exactly as the evil looking idol, but worse. George rolled over and was as if dead.

The demon stood upright and menacing against Father Brown, but he managed to get hold of his Crucifix and brandish it ... and the demon shrieked as if in pain and grew weak ... a shriek which curled the blood ad filled men and women with terror. Until it was reduced to a wail.

"Don't go soft on him now," whispered Georgina under her breath. But the priest had gone on menacing the demon.

Father Brown renewed his efforts and said a "begone, begone from the world of men!" with the cross on high.

Tash uttered another shriek of terror, and fled, across the fire, through the statue of itself, into some void. And the statue's limbs began to tremble, and totter, and it fell, and it lay in the fire, beside its chief worshipper, the bad Telmarine, the evil police officer, the former seducer of George to devilworship, who groaned.

"If I could untie someone's ropes and one could quench the fire, maybe we could save this man. He needs repentance."

He untied the ropes of Georgina, and of Charles, and these untied the ropes of Julian and Dick. And - with an excuse for the delay - Father Brown untied the ropes of old Simon. Then he went over to George, made a sign on the cross over the forehead, said "wake up young fool, should not have been dabbling in these things, you know ..." and if George did not wake up immediately, at least he moaned.

Meanwhile the others - or one of them - had found out how to turn on some water, and it filled the fiery basin with a sizzling and smoke - a much nicer smoke than the stench of Tash - and hot steam as water got hotter and lesser flames as fire grew weaker. Charles drew up the moaning evil man from the fire basin, where he had so oeftn committed ritual murders to honour the expelled demon.

"You were my boss at the police station, but now you are under arrest. You shall get to hospital and to prison, do you hear me?"

"You're a fool, I'm dying before I get anywhere like that."

And he lost consciousness, and before he reached the hospital he was dead.

But before the ambulance even came for him, George regained his consciousness. And Georgina and Simon and Father Brown were all looking at him. With some concern.

"I have a funny taste of blood in my mouth," he said (and indeed he had rat blood around the lips), "what happened?"

"We will tell you later, right now you seem to need a glass of brandy to wash your mouth ..."

And George who was himself again could indicate where that could be gotten, and they all had brandy - a glass each. "A friend of mine," said Father Brown, "said one should thank God for Beer and Brandy by not drinking too much of them. One can add: by not omitting the occasions when needed."

When the ambulance had arrived and taken away the unconscious culprit, they walked upstairs into the kitchen for breakfast. It was no longer night, but morning and the sun was bright.

Father Brown tottered into a chair. "Sorry, but this is the first time I deal with manifestations of the demonic. Like this. I am not sure I will be able to celebrate Mass this morning. I am not quite as used to things like this as a Franciscan in Pietrelcina that I have heard of."

Simon and George Catechumens

"I've seen a god of the Canaanites and Tyrians destroyed, and a Catholic priest did it ..." Simon White spoke that.

Father Brown blushed.

"Oh, the least I can do for the true one - once the physical odds are not too daunting immediately."

"All of my life, I have regarded Christians, especially Catholics, as worshippers of Bopheth."

"And today you have seen we are not."

"Tell us about the true Messiah!"

"How do you know Jesus Christ is the true one?"

"I saw you handle the demon. But more important, I saw you not be impressed by the swagger of the mage."

"I thought he was a fake mage, I had the habit. Never met a true one before."

"But your argument rests? The true God is neither cruel nor a lover of mystery for its own sake, but a loving father of his creatures and truth without a shade of lie?"

"That remains my answer."

"Even in front of the magic you saw?"

"You saw its unmaking, did you not?"

"Yes, of course ... I did. But once you had not seen it. Would you have doubted while he was strong?"

"Not one second. I mean, Odin did the same tricks in front of poor old Gylfi* in Sweden."

"If you had been brought to a previous life, would you have accepted that you were a reincarnation?"

"No."

"But if you had had memories of it?"

"I might conclude that either hypnosis opened my mind defenselessly to some show of demons, or some show of elves who did not want to be taken too seriously, or that my life had been extended into some loop of time, or anything leaving my soul and my body same relation since they were created in my mothers womb, nine months before my birth, and will remain until they are separated at the hour of my death (which may be soon, considering my age, Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us!). But I would not conclude my religion was in error."

"Then it shall be mine and my son's. I am Simon Ben Ruben White, my son is George White."

"George is a Greek name - has he no Hebrew name?"

"Ha, I thought I would trick you on that one, if only for a moment ... no, I did not, here is his full name: George Ruben Ben Simon White."

"Your father died when he was born?"

"He did."

"George Ruben - will you also study the Christian faith as your father wants you to?"

"Well, I can hardly ask Georgina to become Jewish, since she is not."

And that is how two conversions were decided, but Susan was not told this until some time later.



*Gylfi is pronounced with f like v. G is hard or like J or like Y. The vowel Y is best like French u or German ü, but an I (short) will do. He was the first known King of Upsala, the last of the previous régime, whether he was also first or not. He allowed Odin to usurp his place after being shown some hypnotic stuff and told a cock-and-bull story of the grand Marduk-killed-a-monster-and-created-the-earth style. Snorri wrote about it in Gylfaginning. Since Odin's cock-and-bull story was accepted by Swedes and Norse and Icelanders before they became Christian, it was just afterwards, so to speak, "required reading" for those wishing to understand recent pagan poetry. And Snorri was one Christian who did wish that. St. Olaf, the Christian convert and Martyr King of Norway, who descended from Odin or from his stepson Frey, was content to say "he must be dead, since he appears as a ghost" - after getting one such visit at night.

Father Brown's Last Bow, part 2

Father Brown was just figuring out how the talk would go:

Susan received him with a glass of wine. He sighed for relief. She was not a Puritan or an Albigensian. He had wanted to start about the talking animals, but he let that wait.

"Do you think God wants you to tell everybody about this?"

"No, but neither to lie about it to hide it. That is the difficult part. I get into trouble for this."

"Can I ask a few more specific question?"

"Of course."

"Did you ever see one beast that was not talking turn into a talking one?"

"No, except Aslan said it was when the mice bit through the ropes they became talking mice."

"Did you see them start to talk back then?"

"No, I was told it a year later of our time, when we came back to Prince Caspian's rescue."

"Hmmm ... ok ..."

He went off to the window and asked if he could smoke a cigar.

"Oh, I do not mind at all."

"Some do."

"Some have asthma and some are Puritan. Neither is the case with me."

Father Brown enjoyed his cigar while thinking of the next question.

"Do you pray for people in Narnia?" he resumed while putting down the last embers of the cigar.

"I prayed for Rilian's delivery from enchantment, hypnosis, and captivity, and from being treated like a fool when he was not."

"And when Jack Lewis - as I suppose the friends call Clive Staples - wrote The Silver Chair from the papers your friends Scrubb and Pole had left with Professor Kirke, did he know this?"

"No, we were not that close. Nor are we now."

"Do you feel responsible for Narnia?"

"I am the only surviving Queen of the land, am I not?"

"And ruling as a Queen here?"

"Of course not! I was just trying to defend an innocent person!"

"Indeed, you are back after some trouble that took you abroad."

He fell silent. The he resumed again:

"If this was from God, and if he gave you no message to spread to others - at least not personally - what did it do to you?"

"Heard of St Lucia da Narni, Father?"

He nodded.

"Or of Sister Lucy in Fatima?"

"Yes."

"I admired them. They risked so much, they suffered so much. I could never do that, but if I had not seen my sister try to do something similar, I would not have known what it is to love God"

He waited.

"And it was Lucy's essays that led me to fight for righteousness, to save innocent persons from school tyranny and from abortion, and which led me to the Catholic Church."

When she opened the door, he knew this was not what was going to be said.

Her guilty, hopeless, probably often responsibility ridden face gave him all the information he needed:

"What have you done to your sister?"

"I betrayed her, because I tried to be her keeper."

And he heard her confession, and she could know that her heart was henceforth pure of that treason. And she could receive her Lord and her God in her mouth, as previously she had thrown her arms around him in Narnia.

Father Brown's Last Bow, Part II

Susan received Father Brown with a glass of wine. He sighed for relief. She was not a Puritan or an Albigensian. He had wanted to start about the talking animals, but he let that wait.

"Do you think God wants you to tell everybody about this?"

"No, but neither to lie about it to hide it. That is the difficult part. I get into trouble for this."

"Can I ask a few more specific question?"

"Of course."

"Did you ever see one beast that was not talking turn into a talking one?"

"No, except Aslan said it was when the mice bit through the ropes they became talking mice."

"Did you see them start to talk back then?"

"No, I was told it a year later of our time, when we came back to Prince Caspian's rescue."

"Hmmm ... ok ..."

Father Brown went off to the window and asked if he could smoke a cigar.

"Oh, I do not mind at all."

"Some do."

"Some have asthma and some are Puritan. Neither is the case with me."

Father Brown enjoyed his cigar while thinking of the next question.

"Do you pray for people in Narnia?" he resumed while putting down the last embers of the cigar.

"I prayed for Rilian's delivery from enchantment, hypnosis, and captivity, and from being treated like a fool when he was not."

"And when Jack Lewis - as I suppose the friends call Clive Staples - wrote The Silver Chair from the papers your friends Scrubb and Pole had left with Professor Kirke, did he know this?"

"No, we were not that close. Nor are we now."

"Do you feel responsible for Narnia?"

"I am the only surviving Queen of the land, am I not?"

"And ruling as a Queen here?"

"Of course not! I was just trying to defend an innocent person!"

"Indeed, you are back after some trouble that took you abroad."

He fell silent. The he resumed again:

"If this was from God, and if he gave you no message to spread to others - at least not personally - what did it do to you?"

"Heard of St Lucia da Narni, Father?"

He nodded.

"Or of Sister Lucy in Fatima?"

"Yes."

"I admired them. They risked so much, they suffered so much. I could never do that, but if I had not seen my sister try to do something similar, I would not have known what it is to love God"

He waited.

"And it was Lucy's essays that led me to fight for righteousness, to save innocent persons from school tyranny and from abortion, and which led me to the Catholic Church."

Father Brown's Last Bow, part 1

A Jesuit thought he had been done with investigation. Only prayer left, and the sacrifice of the Mass. And living the life of villains except for finally consenting to doing the villainies. Of course.

A letter arriving from the Bishop set him thinking otherwise.

Venerable Brother,

Susan Pevensie of CSL's children's books is a real person. She claims to have really been to Narnia. Not a question of wanting to spread the word at all, she wants a quiet life, but ... is it from God or the devil? Should she be made to abjure?

Yours in Christ
NN NN + episc. LN*

And the first answer:

Your Highness,

Have you ruled out madness?

Yours in Christ NN Brown.

And the second:

Venerable Brother,

She is sane. She could have gotten illusions while in an epiletic fit, except that epilepsy does not fit her medicale state. She is as fit as a fiddle, and that includes total absence of epileptic symptoms - except this one, if it would have fitted.

Yours in Christ
NN NN + episc. LN

And Father Brown saw the adress:

Miss Susan Pevensie
Baker Street 221 B
London

"Hmm, didn't that use to be my secularist colleague Sherlock's abode? Though when I gave him the sacraments, it was in the office of his friend Dr Watson, of course. It won't be easy to miss the place, anyway!"

*NN=Nomen Nescio=Don't Know the Name
LN=Locum Nescio=Don't Know the Place
As for Fr Brown I do not know his baptismal name.